Thanks to everyone who joined the working party last Saturday to spruce up St Mary’s Church Churchyard.  It took a lot of hard work but by the end of the morning the churchyard looked really lovely. Thanks also to Mick who provided us all with a well needed bacon butty at break time. 

St. Mary’s Church, Chard to receive £13,700 from second round of the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund

• Mary’s Church among more than 2,700 recipients to benefit from the latest round of awards from the £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund 
• This award will help make the church more attractive and will go some way to replacing out of date equipment and effecting minor building repairs necessary after a year of disuse. 

St.Mary’s Church in Chard has received a grant of £13,700 from the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund to help the church recover and reopen. 

Nearly £400 million has been awarded to thousands of cultural organisations across the country including St.Mary’s Church in the latest round of support from the Culture Recovery Fund, the Culture Secretary announced today.

St.Mary’s dates from 1400 in its present form and like all old buildings, needs constant attention and upgrades and minor facelift work to make it an attractive proposition to anyone thinking of visiting after a year of neglect due to the pandemic. Some of the money for instance, will be spent on new toys and a climbing frame for the mothers and toddlers group. There will also be a new screen and projector which will not only be used during services but also to show films for community events which are being planned to make the church more welcoming to the community at large, not just church-goers. 

Over £800 million in grants and loans has already been awarded to support almost 3,800 cinemas, performance venues, museums, heritage sites and other cultural organisations dealing with the immediate challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.

This brings the Government’s total investment across grants, capital and repayable finance from the Culture Recovery Fund so far to more than £1.2 billion across over 5,000 individual cultural and heritage organisations and sites.

The second round of awards made today will help organisations to look ahead to the spring and summer and plan for reopening and recovery. After months of closures and cancellations to contain the virus and save lives, this funding will be a much-needed helping hand for organisations transitioning back to normal in the months ahead. 

Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, said:

“Our record breaking Culture Recovery Fund has already helped thousands of culture and heritage organisations across the country survive the biggest crisis they’ve ever faced.

Now we’re staying by their side as they prepare to welcome the public back through their doors – helping our cultural gems plan for reopening and thrive in the better times ahead.”

 Robin Bailey, Parish Church Secretary said: This is brilliant news! It will enable us to make some improvements to church facilities which will also benefit the wider community as increasingly we welcome members of the public to join us in events other than worship. This has come at a time when the church income is at a low ebb due to the pandemic so this a much appreciated initiative by the Culture Secretary and the money will be well spent.  A detailed plan has already been drawn up by myself and the two church wardens. 

 Ros Kerslake, CEO of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, said:

 “Spring is definitely here, bringing not only sunshine but that sense of optimism and             hope for the future. We are all looking forward to heritage places and other visitor            attractions reopening and I am very pleased that we have been able to support                                DCMS in delivering this vital funding to ensure the UK’s heritage sector can rebuild        and thrive, boosting local economies, creating jobs and supporting personal                             wellbeing.” 

 Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, said:

 “The value of our heritage sites and the people who run them has been amply                         demonstrated, as they have provided an anchor for so many of us through the dark    days of the last year. Vital grants from the Culture Recovery Fund have helped them     survive and will now help them recover, as the places we all cherish start to reopen                in the months ahead.”

The funding awarded today is from a £400 million pot which was held back last year to ensure the Culture Recovery Fund could continue to help organisations in need as the public health picture changed. The funding has been awarded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England as well as the British Film Institute and Arts Council England 

Notes to Editors

At the Budget, the Chancellor announced the £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund would be boosted with a further £300 million investment. Details of this third round of funding will be announced soon. 

About The National Lottery Heritage Fund 

 Using money raised by the National Lottery, we Inspire, lead and resource the UK’s heritage to create positive and lasting change for people and communities, now and in the future. www.heritagefund.org.uk.  Follow @HeritageFundUK on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and use #NationalLotteryHeritageFund   

About Historic England

We are Historic England, the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England’s spectacular historic environment, from beaches and battlefields to parks and pie shops. We protect, champion and save the places that define who we are and where we’ve come from as a nation. We care passionately about the stories they tell, the ideas they represent and the people who live, work and play among them. Working with communities and specialists we share our passion, knowledge and skills to inspire interest, care and conservation, so everyone can keep enjoying and looking after the history that surrounds us all.

Dear Friends

As I write this the rain is streaming down and I can hear the sound of water pouring from a blocked gutter!  I have just made myself a second cup of tea in order to keep warm. To make things worse, I have just received a photograph from a friend living in southern France showing herself and her husband on their terrace in the sunshine, enjoying a glass of the local wine.

When Mick and I first moved here to Chard we couldn’t believe how much it seemed to rain.  We had lived for over thirty years in East Anglia, most of the time in Cambridge, which is apparently the driest city in England. 

But rain, even in the summer, is essential to our lives, and believe it or not, I have come to like the rain!  And of course, quite rightly, those living in drought hit areas of the world our moaning about the rain would seem to come from a place of privilege. 

In the Bible, rain is a sign of God’s abundance, “You sent abundant rain upon your land, O God” (Psalm 68:9)

In the story of Elijah rain plays an important part in his journey with God: “and it came to pass, after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, ‘Go, present yourself to Ahab, and I will send the rain upon the earth”.  Then Elijah said to Ahab, ‘Go up, eat and drink; for there is the sound of the abundance of rain’.  (1Kings 18: 18 and 41).

When Elijah speaks these words to Ahab there has not been a sign of rain, in fact he sees drought, famine and barrenness.  Yet Elijah chooses to believe God’s promise.  He chooses to believe what he heard with his spirit in spite of what he sees with his eyes.

We have all lived, in many different ways, through a period of drought and barrenness in the last year and at times it has been hard to see how it will come to an end.  However, come to an end it will, and we have to believe in our hearts, as Elijah did, that our time of drought will be turned by God into a time of abundance of rain.  Rain that brings new growth, blossoming and flourishing.

In our gospel reading this week, Jesus experiences a moment of barrenness and drought as he is rejected by the people of his own town.  He is mocked as being ‘a carpenter, and the son of Mary’.  No mention of a father, and this might have been deliberate.  Because of this Mark tells us Jesus ‘could do no deed of power there’.  Even Jesus sometimes needed a response of faith from those around him, an affirmation from others.

So we too, need to be affirmed and listened to.  It has been hard over the past year to be together in ways which offer comfort and support to one another.  But as things return to normal we can begin to come together again, meeting over coffee after church, meeting in our groups and social events.  It is a time to look forward to and, although we can’t quite yet imagine it, it will come because we have God’s promise that he will always bring an ‘abundance of rain’ into the dry and barren places of our lives, so that we can begin to flourish and grow in faith together again.

Every blessing

Ann