Rosebery Road Methodist Church

Preparations for the Festival are in full swing, and the displays are looking beautiful. We hope that plenty of visitors will come to see them! Opening dates/times and other information may be found in the earlier post about the event.

Although we normally raise funds for a charity, this year we have decided to ask for donations towards the very necessary refurbishment of our Church Hall suite, and we hope that visitors will feel able to support us in our efforts to get the rooms ready to be offered for use by local (or not so local) community groups.

Our annual Cribs and Trees Festival will be open on Saturday 3rd, Sunday 4th, Friday 9th, Saturday 10th and Sunday 11th December from 10.30am to 4.00pm (12 noon to 4.00pm on the Sundays), with the Christingle Service at 4.00pm on Sunday 11th. There will also be organ recitals by Tim Patient from 11.00am to 12 noon on both Saturdays, and carol singing at 11.00am on Friday 9th.

As usual, there will be light refreshments available, plus craft, gift, produce, and second hand book stalls. Parking will be available in the school playground opposite the church.

Donations this year will be in aid of our Church Hall Refurbishment Fund, as the Hall and particularly the side rooms are in need of renovation so that we can offer them for hire to local user groups.

We look forward to welcoming friends old and new over the two weekends, so please do come along, we’d love to see you! The displays will remain in place until the new year, so can be viewed over the Christmas period by those who come to the seasonal services.

We look forward to welcoming the Year 3 classes from Angel Road School on Tuesday 11th October, when they will be visiting the church to see our Harvest displays; to learn more about Harvest; and to do some related craft work.

Seventeen of us went to Heartsease Lane last week for a lovely service led by Rev Nick Collison, and an enjoyable time of fellowship – coffee/tea followed by a buffet lunch – afterwards. It was good to meet and chat to friends old and new.

This week (9th October) we look forward to welcoming some friends from Heartsease Lane and possibly other churches to our Harvest Festival service, which will be followed by tea/coffee and then a ‘bring-and-share’ lunch in the Calvert Hall. We hope that everyone will enjoy the fellowship as much as we did last week.

This year we shall be celebrating Harvest Festival with two services. The first will be at Heartsease Lane Methodist Church on Sunday 2nd October, with visiting preacher Rev Nick Collison, as part of that church’s closure plans. We have been invited to go to this, so there will be no service here that Sunday. There will be a buffet lunch afterwards for those who would like to stay.

The second service will be here at Rosebery Road on Sunday 9th October, and we have invited the Heartsease Lane congregation to join us in worship and in refreshments and a ‘bring-and-share’ lunch afterwards.

We look forward to sharing fellowship on the two Sundays, and also to welcoming members of Heartsease Lane who might choose to come to our services once their church has closed.

We have already gained a few new hirer groups, and we haven’t even advertised widely yet! We’ve also had enquiries from some more groups who might be interested in using our premises, so we are looking forward to growing as a community facility.

During the past two weeks we have had four clearing out sessions in the Calvert Hall suite, which have made a massive difference to the premises. A mountain of ‘stuff’ is now awaiting removal by a waste collection company, which will free up the outside space. Many thanks are due to everyone who came and helped with clearing, cleaning, tidying the car park and access ways, and much more – a total of almost 80 person-hours’ work was done over the four sessions.

The next job will be to get the side rooms refurbished so that they, too, will be available for use once again.

We are pleased to say that the Calvert Hall is now available for hire on weekdays as well as in the evenings and at weekends. More rooms will be available once they have been refurbished. If you need somewhere to meet, and would be interested to see if our facilities would suit you, please get in touch with our Property Steward on (01603) 483504 or at bookings.rrmc@gmail.com

We had intended that this should be held outdoors in the car park but, owing to the inclement weather, we had to eat in the Calvert Hall instead. However, this did not lessen the celebratory atmosphere and thirty four people – including members of our church family, some of our neighbours from Rosebery Road, and other guests – enjoyed food, entertainment and fellowship. You can see some pictures of the event in the Photo Gallery

We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who helped in any way with the event: cleaning and setting up the Hall; weeding the garden and car park; preparing and serving the food; setting up the exhibition of Coronation memorabilia; and clearing up afterwards. It was a real team effort and worth the work!

Preparations are in full swing for the lunch on Sunday. We are hoping to host between 30 and 40 people, and will be pleased to welcome anyone else who might decide to come on the day. All we need now is some good weather so that we can eat outside!