Great Hale, St John the Baptist - Last updated 4th January 2024

Our Church Warden position is vacant at present. 

Contact Rev Chris 01529 460904

The usual monthly pattern of services is as follows:

First Sunday at 9.30am Holy Communion led by Rev Chris

Second Saturday at 4pm 'Wild Church' led by ALM's Christine & Martin

Third Sunday at 9.30am Holy Communion led by Rev Stephen

Fourth Sunday at 4pm 'Food for the Journey' - Celtic Prayer led by Christine. 

VARIETY OF WORSHIP

Holy Communion is on the first & third Sundays of each month at 9.30am 

'Wild Church' is at 4pm on the second Saturday of each month. It is usually held in the church yard focusing on environmental issues and the beauty and wonder of creation. Contact Christine Newitt for details. 

'Food for the Journey' is a service of Celtic Prayer from the Northumbria Community on the fourth Sunday of each month at 4pm. 

Bible Study on Wednesday evening in church at 7.30pm led by Rev Stephen 

Silent Prayer Vigil for Ukraine on Wednesday evening at 7pm for half an hour

There are other special services of celebration throughout the year. 

NEXT EVENTS

Saturday 6th January at 12 noon - Jacket Potato & Pudding lunch in church - £5

CHARITY CD 

Elaine Huckle, who is also a singer in the operatic style has released a new album called 'Timeless Favourites'. Watching the beautiful dragon flies at Flag Fen Peterborough gave Elaine strength before her own cancer operation. All the profits from the sale of the album are going to MacMillan Cancer charity.  Copies are available from Elaine priced £10. 

COME AND SEE GREAT HALE 

The church has reopened for private prayer each day from 10am till dusk. 

Do come and have a look at the newly reordered church. The pews have gone, there is a new stone floor, the screened area has been changed and a new kitchen is soon to be fitted. It looks really good and huge credit goes to our Elaine Huckle and Sue Brown and all the team that have helped in the project including Ben Peek from our Architects CMS.  Very well done to you all. 

HELP US SUPPORT THE LOCAL FOOD BANK

Items for the food bank are welcome - please leave in the screened area - many thanks.   

HISTORY OF THE BUILDING

                                                                       

                                                      Carving on tower pinacle (photo by local photographer Martin Wace)

Great Hale. A pleasant place in blossom time, and indeed, at any time, its church, which belonged to Bardney Abbey 600 years ago land lost its chancel about the time of the Civil war, is a striking building with simple, rugged tower, long aisles and spacious porch.

The tower is its great feature for except for its 15th-century parapet and leafy pinnacles it was built by Saxons, probably a century before the Conquest. Largely of rubble, it has the usual Saxon belfry windows, deeply-splayed and with dividing baluster shaft, and an arch into the nave probably built by the Normans. At the north-east corner, in the thickness of the wall, is a turret staircase about 15 inches wide, its steps worn by the impress of feet through a thousand years.

  

Organ built by Thomas J Robson. Installed in 1896.

The spacious nave, its east end serving as a chancel, has five pointed arches on each side borne up on slender 13th-century pillars. Both aisles still have their medieval piscinas and aumbries, and north aisle and chancel have ancient screenwork incorporated with new. Part of the roodloft stairway remains, and the fine font with quatre-foils and niches on its eight sides has been in use for 600 years.

There are two notable memorials to the Cawdrons who came to live here in the 17th century and saw the chancel, long ruinous, finally demolished. One shows Robert Cawdron, who dies during the Commonwealth, with his two wives and ample family; nine sons and seven daughters are behind the parents, and five more children in swaddling clothes lie in the foreground. Another Robert Cawdron who died in the year of the Great Plague and was probably one of those 21 children, has a sculptured memorial showing him kneeling at a prayer desk with one of his three wives, while the other two kneel discreetly in their long dresses and veils in separate compartments below.

 view from the road