RESTORATION UPDATE

St Mary’s Church Great Wymondley

Restoration update

We started our campaign to raise vital funds for our church restoration just 9 months ago with a challenging target of raising £75,000 by Christmas to enable us to achieve our Stage 2 funding from English Heritage and start work in 2008

We are delighted to be able to report that with the great support we have received from everybody we have submitted the full set of documentation by our deadline of the 19th December

Even though tenders received were above the original estimates we have been able to provide confirmation that we have the money in place- a great achievement as well as full specification of the works tendered prices and a preferred contractor

We now await English Heritages confirmation that all is in order for a late spring /early summer start on site

The PCC and Fund raising team are very grateful for the generosity and support we have received from personal donations, support for our many functions (some 25 in total) and other grant bodies such as Herts and Beds Churches Trust in helping us reach this milestone.

The last month has seen further grants, personal donations as well as successful events –the promises auction raised over £6,000, the Orpheus Choir, Quiz night and further autumn lectures

We planned to raise funds for a year and our remaining programme is both exciting and necessary to provide additional funds

More information later but dates for the diary include

9th Feb St Mary’s Hitchin for a concert by the Royal College of Music

13th March for a talk by Michael Wood famed BBC historian on 2000 years in Great Wymondley

Our Lecture series continues

Rev’d Ann is seeking 100 people to pay £1 per day for a prayer a day for our church for the 31 days of January

With Many thanks for everybody’s support in helping us reach this key milestone in our restoration project and Best Wishes for Christmas and The New Year



St Mary’s PCC and the restoration fund raising team

Classical Music Concert at St. Mary's Church, Hitchin

ST MARY’S CHURCH, GREAT WYMONDLEY
RESTORATION FUND APPEAL

An Evening of Popular Classical Music by musicians from the Royal Academy of Music
On Saturday 9th February 2008 - 7.30pm, St Mary’s Church, Hitchin

Including pieces by J S Bach, Samuel Barber (Clarinet Concerto - 1st movement) Mozart (Clarinet Concerto – 2nd movement), John Williams (theme from Schindler’s List), Rimsky-Korsakov (Flight of the Bumblebee) and Tchaikovsky (Nutcracker Suite)

Tickets: £10 with a glass of wine. Children under 16 accompanied by an adult free

Tickets available from:
HITCHIN INITIATIVE, 27, CHURCHYARD, HITCHIN
CHERRY CARTER: 01438-724919
CHARLES INGHAM: 01438-727814

Christening in St. Mary's

Fifteen months' ago after closing its doors St. Mary's has re-opened with a baptism.

Chris and Michelle Stokes, who were the last couple to get married at St. Mary's in April 2006, were the first to use the re-opened church to have their baby Emily baptised.

The building had been closed for repair work and villagers have been working hard for the last 14 months to raise the money to finance the work.

Around £16,500 has been raised so far but the current repairs are only TEMPORARY and approximately £58,000 STILL NEEDS TO BE RAISED for the church to be eligible for a top-up grant from English Heritage.

Great Wymondley Parochial Church Council would like to thank those who have supported the church and who have made donations or helped with the various fundraising activities.

Open Gardens - Sunday 8th July 2007

This year's Open Gardens was a great success and raised £2025 on Sunday thanks to the great weather!!!.

Well done to everyone for their help and consideration. I know many people stayed helping in the kitchens much longer than they had anticipated and I am not sure how we would have managed without you - many many thanks.

All the visitors were very complimentary about the gardens, the teas and lunches especially the cakes and the variety of people presenting things on the green. This was a very big effort by the whole village. We hopefully will be updating the board on the Green - we can move up another box.

Well done everyone!

Village Fete - 24th June 2007

The fete this year in spite of the bad weather raised an excellent £1,550 towards the Church Restoration Fund.

Well done everyone who helped run it and provided things to sell and things for people to see and do. Thank you very much.

The BBQ after the fete made a profit of £186 even in the rain. This makes the grand total of £1,736. This will move the red up the
scale on the appeal board!

Plant Sale - 26th May 2007

The plant sale with a produce stall raised an impressive £443.65 and the remaining plants were put out each day on The Green for the next week inviting donations from the passers by in exchange for plants. The honesty box collected a further £111.00 making a grand total of £554.65!

Thank you to everyone who grew and provided plants for us to sell, lent greenhouses to bring them on, made cakes etc to sell on the produce stall and helped run the sale on the day.

A special thank you to St. Ippolyts Church who gave us all the remaining plants from their plant sale - a real help.

Please note - we are hoping to run an Autumn Sale with divided plants and potted on seedlings.

Sponsored Walk - 22nd April 2007

Our sponsored walk on 22nd April raised £834. We had a lovely day for the walk which was well attended with many dogs and people of all ages.

We enjoyed home made soup and bread in the Village Hall afterwards. Thank you to Nicky Tomlin for organising the event including researching, plotting out the route, drawing the map and making a lovely big pan of soup.

Maybe we could do this again next year!