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Tag: St Michael’s Church
Holy Week at Hernhill: village green Cross and Zoom services
There is now a wooden cross on the Green which will be bare all through this coming week, Holy Week, but on Easter Day it will be covered with netting so that anyone who would like to can place flowers, prayers or messages on the cross. They can be in memory of a loved one who has died, a prayer, a thanksgiving or simply placed in celebration of the resurrection.
You will need to observe social distancing and may like to wear gloves to place your flowers / prayers / messages and sanitize your hands before and after.
As we go through this coronavirus emergency more than ever we need to be reminded there is no darkness that God, in the end, cannot turn to good. Please do come anytime during Easter Day and help make our cross a symbol of resurrection and new life.
Holy Week and Easter services
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday 7.30 pm
Night Prayer with short address (Zoom only)
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Maundy Thursday 7.30 pm Holy Communion (Zoom only)
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Good Friday, 2 pm (Zoom only)
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Easter Day 10 am Holy Communion (Zoom only)
Anyone is welcome to join in our Zoom services but you need an invitation, please email jeanburrows@jeanius.me.uk. Zoom services are 40 minutes max.
There are also lots of resources online, radio and television to accompany us through Holy Week and Easter.
A message from Reverend Jean
Hello everyone, I hope you are all keeping safe and well. I’m sure you’ve all heard on the news that all worship services as well as all our church events have been suspended until further notice. I’m very disappointed to say this includes our Hernhill 900 events, we had a big village celebration event on the Green planned for mid-June and many other special events throughout the year. Hopefully once this pandemic is over we will be able to hold our celebration events, even if it is 900+1.
Although church services are no longer being held the church still exists and we are still able to worship, albeit in a different way. There are many resources online and I’ve also sent out resources to regular church members by email and post, please contact me if you would like to receive these. A reminder that Hernhill Church is still open during the day every day so do go in if you would like to, we are also going to put some extra prayer resources in there to help you reflect and pray, especially with Easter approaching. Baptisms and weddings can still go ahead in church but only five people can attend, including me, so most have been postponed. This also affects funerals where immediate family only may attend although this advice may change and crems and funeral directors may also have their own rules about attendance.
The caring and concern people within our villages are showing for those who are vulnerable and self-isolating is heart-warming but at the same time we see horrendous selfishness and greed as people are binge-buying, please don’t do it, it’s not necessary. Remember to keep social distancing however old you are. If there is anything that you think I might be able to help you with or if you would like specific prayer please get in touch.Keep well, keep praying, keep connected.
Revd Jean
01227 751410 jeanburrows@jeanius.me.uk
All fright on the night…
Hernhill village has become a hotbed of horror, and terrors await the unwary traveller trespassing on the roads this Halloween. Skeletons, vampires, witches and strange ghostly figures lurk behind fences; hedgerows strewn with cobewbs teem with giant spiders; ghastly mannequins wait to surprise passers-by; dare YOU tread these historic paths on these dark nights during the Halloween period ?!
If so, then collect a map from Summer Leas Farm for £2, and trace your fearful footsteps throughout the trail leading through the village; the trail lasts all this week, with a ghostly Grand Finale at Summer Leas Farm on 31 October from 6.30pm. Proceeds from this terrifying odyssey will go towards a fund-raiser to celebrate the village church’s 900th anniversary throughout 2020.
Grab and map; will you make it through the village alive ?
Windows into history
St Michael’s Church, which next year celebrates its 900th anniversary, declares its history not just in its stone and wood architecture, but in its windows too.
Two stained-glass windows in particular come from significant moments in the history of the village. The oldest glass in the church can be glimpsed behind the right-hand choir stalls (Decani, for those choristers amongst our readers…), and dates from the fifteenth century. The Martyn Window, named after the family responsible for rebuilding the church at the time, was originally installed in 1447; the remaining glass owes its continued existence to the fact that it was apparently hidden on a nearby farm during the English Civil War.
The Lady Chapel is home to a window from the Pre-Raphaelite Period, commissioned in 1877 from Henry Holiday (1839-1927), artist, illustrator, sculptor and stained-glass window designer who lived in Bayswater in London. Holiday’s windows can be found across the country, notably in Westminster Abbey and Worcester College, Oxford, to name but two. Holiday was also commissioned to illustrate Lewis Carroll’s famous The Hunting of the Snark. Holiday’s family were also friends of Emmeline Pankhurst, organiser of the Suffragete movement. The Pre-Raphaelites famously rebelled against the Royal Academy’s trumpeting of genre-painting and idealist depictions, urging rather an embracing of the natural world and an intense realism in art, led by William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Pieces from a civil war and rebellious art: echoes of great history and its wider cultural connections quietly presented in this small corner of the world…
(Grateful acknowledgement of the information leaflet in the church for some of these details).
Breathing Space with the University of Kent Chamber Choir: Friday 15 March
The popular monthly Breathing Space service at St Michael’s continues next week with a sequence of music and silence by candlelight on Friday 15 March, performed by the University of Kent Chamber Choir.
A meditative, reflective event that creates space for contemplation, the event will feature the University’s student singers in a programme including a setting of The Lord’s Prayer, the plainchaint Rorate coeli de super and a setting of the American spiritual, Go Down, Moses as well as a colourful movement from Between Worlds, a choral work inspired by science, by Deal-based composer, Anna Phoebe.
The Choir recently sang Choral Evensong at Canterbury Cathedral as part of a busy programme of performing commitments throughout the academic year. Their performance at next week’s Breathing Space will also include a beautiful setting of Blest are the Pure in Heart’by composer James Webb.
The hour-long service starts at 7.30pm, and all are welcome.
Hernhill Christmas Craft Fair: Sat 12 November
Come and bag an early seasonal bargain at the Hernhill Christmas Craft Fair next week.
Between 10.30am – 4pm on Saturday 12 November, St Michael’s Church will be hosting the event, and there will also be refreshments and light lunches served, with all donations and profits in aid of the church.
There will be additional parking in the yard opposite the village green on the day; get ahead of the crowds and find an early Christmas gift! Find out more about the church and its location here.
Art Exhibition at St Michael’s next weekend
The new 2016 Hernhill Artists Calendar will be launched at the Art Exhibition at St. Michael’s Church, Hernhill, next weekend.
The exhibition takes place on Saturday July 25th and Sunday July 26th from 10.00 am-6.00 pm each day, and admission is free!
The original paintings used for the Artists Calendar will be on view at the exhibition together with works from many local artists.
All donations will be gratefully received and put towards the upkeep of St.Michael’s Church. Any enquiries about the event to Brian Jelfs on 01227 752309.
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