Each month we take a look at what’s been happening in St Mary’s through the eyes of one of the churchwardens. This week, Roy Abel explains that the role of the churchwarden is to preserve and maintain St Mary’s for the whole town, not just for the congregation.
Welcome once more to Churchwarden’s Corner – I was just informing your friends about the rigours of the warden’s task, but they were called away when I started talking about the drains in the churchyard. Oh yes indeed, this is a critical matter. For months, townsfolk were hounding me about water spilling from the hoppers set around the valleys of the church roof, and I would say… “Yes, mea culpa,” and yet the moss from the roofs collects in the hoppers, and the moss in the hoppers gathers in the downpipes and the leaves in the downpipes clog the drains. There must be a song in there somewhere surely – a round perhaps with each part taken by a different element of the rainwater goods? And it is the same with Holy Spirit Rye Harbour, only here we didn’t stop with clearing the drains but we reinstated the soakaway as well. Of course, fascinating as this turgid tale might be, this is not the whole reason for telling it, but rather it shows how the church and churchyard, roof and walls, buttresses and windows, are important not just to the devotees that congregate on a Sunday and other times, but to all the people of Rye, residents, shopkeepers, townsfolk and parishioners all.
Speaking of the latter, I discovered something slightly horrifying about my own job this last week. Churchwardens like me are elected at the Annual Parish Meeting, by a show of hands. Since we are entrusted with keeping order in church services and the churchyard, this must be something like electing an American sheriff, only without the squad car and the handgun, (though we are issued with an official wand).
I had assumed that it was my friends at the church services who were the only electors that I had to worry about, and so long as I kept them warm in their pews and secured the church silver, that I would be a shoe-in to the post. Not at all, it appears. In fact the churchwardens are elected, not just by those who sign on to the parish roll and are therefore eligible as parish councillors, but by the entire body of parishioners! Yes that means every regular in every bar in every nook of Rye… look around you my friend, this is my constituency! So I should really have been drumming up support by standing drinks all round? (Shh… not so loud!). In fact, of course, I didn’t need to pack the meeting with Anglican Tendency supporters, as I will think of them, but the fact remains that the churchwarden’s job is deemed to be something covering town life as well as church life. I thought I was getting away from it in this comfortable corner, but perhaps it is a chance to blend the two worlds?
In fact, this perspective opens the way to a different approach to the maintenance of the church, acknowledging it as an asset for the town not simply for the Christians in it, (assuming that there might be others, that is.)
Take for example, the quarter boys, standing semi-naked and bold as brass on the very front of the church that surmounts the town and leans towards the High Street as if determined to pick up some warmer clothes in the Lion Street sales. These boys represent no saints or church worthies, but, in days past, by their metallic striking of the quarter hours, they had the everyday task of informing our working population of passing time when many had no watches. The hours, however, were and are, tolled by the great tenor bell in the chamber, as if the church itself was saying in the manner of a congressional committee member, “I reclaim my time!”. So town and church are bound together in the civic tumbril containing mayor, council, clerics and congregation, and indeed, my companions here tonight.
This very weekend we are able to celebrate the coming together of musical talent in the first concert organised for St Mary by some of the fine musicians of the town. And the aim? To provide clothes, well gold leaf, for the quarter boys to continue their work and to paint up the old clock face fit for a night out if she wished it. This way we can see the well-loved presence of church and town time cherished and restored.
So at 7.45pm in St Mary’s this Saturday 16 May, we are staging the magnificent Long Riders singing American songs, marshalled by maestro Andy Guaniere and supported by the local Sing It Out Choir, in our great musical venue that happens to be a church too. To make sure that it is affordable, tickets are limited to just £10, so everyone can do their bit to keep the quarter boys clanking! Tickets available from St Mary’s front desk and Grammar School Records. God bless you and keep you singing.
Image Credits: Roy Abel .