By Jill Stocks
Horsforth St Margaret’s Church held its patronal service at the weekend celebrating its congregation and its patron saint.
A special communion service, with stories from the congregation, was held before a patronal festival with food, fellowship, music and games.
Rev Chris Clayton told us about what is a special day in the church’s calendar: “20th July was St Margaret of Antioch’s Day, it’s her saint day, so as St Margaret’s Church here in Horsforth we are celebrating that by having a bit of a party.”
“We’ve got The Dunwells playing good music, we’ve got a BBQ, so we’re here to celebrate what it means to be St Margaret’s here in Horsforth. We’ve been looking at the stories of the past, of St Margaret of Antioch, our own personal stories and then what’s next for us.
“It’s a bit of a future planning, how do we want to be in the community, how do we want to be as a church, what’s the next project for us to get involved in, but first and foremost it’s a celebration, a good party.”
Music was provided at the event by local band The Dunwells, brothers Joe and Dave, who told us about their involvement:
“We are the band The Dunwells, we grew up in Pudsey, so we’ve driven past this church many times so it’s nice to actually be here and be part of this day.
“We do these things called house concerts where we put it on our social media that if anyone wanted to do a house concert you can get involved and get in touch. This church got in touch and they said would you fancy playing in our church and we said that’d be a good collaboration really.”
St Margaret of Antioch is the patron saint of pregnant women, kidney sufferers and servant maids. She is also one of the ‘fourteen Holy Helpers’, a group of saints who are venerated together for their effective influence through prayer against diseases.
As well as honouring the saint who was chosen as the patron of the parish, a patronal service and festival is an opportunity for the church to celebrate the life of the church and it’s congregation, through a social event and through communion and the exchange of stories.
There are lots of stories from St Margaret’s, but perhaps one of the most interesting is about a trip to Peru.
Parishioner Maureen Gorman told us the story: “We went to Peru 11 years ago. I was 76 then. We were all quite elderly. And we used to come to a craft group on a Friday here. To teach skills. We used to do all sorts of things. Card making, embroidery, all sorts of things here.
“Suzy was the head of the craft group and head of Craft Aid International, which has now changed its name to Artisan, based at Harrogate. She came one day and said ‘I’m going to Peru and I would like some volunteers to come with me’. I thought it was too good an opportunity to miss, so I said yes I’d go.
“There were five of us altogether. Mr Lodge, who was in the choir, volunteered to give us some elementary Spanish lessons before we went. We all had to have injections for all sorts of illnesses that you could get.
“We finally got off. We went from Heathrow. First we went to a place in America where we had to change and then we got a plane to Lima which is the capital of Peru. And then we got a plane from there to the second city which was called Arequipa. We were based there and they said we were missionaries and we went every morning to a church and there was a group of people there who were disabled or had downs syndrome and we were teaching them crafts like card making and ceramics.”
Peru presented a different culture for the group:
“They told us not to get a taxi other than one certain firm because people were being kidnapped and held to ransom. So we were very careful what we did but we went to this church every morning from 10am to 4pm to teach these skills. They gave us lunch there and it was very enjoyable. We learnt a lot and so did they.
“It was quite an experience. We were in a house that was owned by another charity that helped sponsor us but we did have to pay but not as much as it would’ve been if we hadn’t been sponsored and it was a lovely house.”
The country also had quite contrasting cuisine and building standards to what they were used to in Horsforth! Maureen told us about their social trips in the country:
“The pastor who was in charge of the church we went to took us out one evening to a restaurant and they were serving guinea pig. I didn’t have guinea pig. They came round with this plate with it and it still had its teeth. I thought ‘poor little thing’. There wasn’t much meat on it.
“It wasn’t all work. We had one weekend where we hired a coach and they took us round and we drove outside Arequipa and we could see them building houses and they were building them on a steep hill. And they were just perching them, really close to each other. I thought ‘my goodness how are they staying up’. You’d think they’d fall over. And we saw llamas. I had a lovely time. And when we came back it took us a long time to get back home. It took us 36 hours and three planes.”
A lasting reminder of the trip is the picture the group created on their return which hangs on the wall in the church.
St Margaret’s will have more stories to tell in the future as it continues to be an important part of the Horsforth community.
This summer the church hosts a Summer Play Cafe every Thursday from 10am to 12pm. A new addition to what is already a packed programme of groups and social events at the church and parish centre.
You can check out the new website for details about what’s going on and service times.
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