Keeping A Roof Over Our Heads

 Today has been a busy morning sorting out some of the mountains of paperwork that has accumulated in the office. Some of it dates back to 1933: beautiful copperplate handwriting with a fountain pen in dedicated  minute books. Lovely. PCC meetings haven't changed much in the last 89 years it has to be said. But in amongst the dusty boxes there was some hidden treasure: we found some copies of the Parish Magazine from 1900 and 1929. Amazing. All work stopped immediately to check out what was happening in and around the parish in the 1900's.  So, in December 1929 St. Peter's Boys' School celebrated their prize giving whilst the Mothers' Union had a talk on The Religious Education of Children from 4-8 years (trust the MU to  be having a good time!). St. Augustine's held a family Gathering at the Alexandra Theatre and Lady Lucas-Tooth gave: " a winsome little speech" to open the proceedings and the new Mayor showed up. The Octagon Church congregation were ...

  It's Celebration Time. The team have been working very hard to put together a fantastic programme for the St. Peter's Summer Festival: our first opportunity to run events for the last 2 years (thank you Covid 19)! So here goes! On Saturday 2nd July we have a table top sale in the Church Hall with all sorts of goodies for sale: plants, cakes, bric-a-brac and the opportunity to come and have a cup of tea and, perhaps, a bacon sandwich with friends. It starts at 09.00 and goes on until 12.00. On Friday 15th. July The 9 Lives Theatre Company presents a Summer Selection box; songs from all those famous West End Shows. The doors open at 6.45 p.m. and the show starts at 7.30 pm. You can call 07817622732 to book tickets. And then if all that is not enough, Trumpet Virtuoso John Barker is giving a Celebration Concert on Sunday 31st. July in the Church. The doors open at 1.30 for a 2.45 start. This is a free concert so just come along!   Ever since Hilary Robinson, Producer of ‘G...

 The dust is settling and we are definitely in the endgame now! Just waiting for the drain saga to resolve and then we are off and running with our amazing new facilities and (largely) waterproof roof. How exciting and what a reward for 5 years of slog, anxiety and stress. The Lottery Bid team are lying down with an aspirin. So where do we go now? The Summer Festival is well on its way and there is much to look forward to, but to kick off we held an activity fun day for the year 6 pupils at one of our local schools. And what a day it was: the sun shined as we opened the doors to about 50-60 young people and their teachers. 5 special activities were planned: gardening, bellringing, stonemasoning (if that's a word), paper sculpture and playing the organ. The garden teams joined our Wisbech in Bloom colleagues and planted and weeded and turned the patch of ground around the boat into a beach. Amazing how fascinating a bucket of seashells are to people who rarely get the chance to go t...

Mothers' Day Daffs; taken with a mobile phone, of course!  Hello! Spring is here and the building work is a hair's breathe from being completed (apart from some drain-related dramas). We have the most beautiful kitchen ever and soon the hard work, sleepless nights and stress of managing such a major project will be over. An amazing achievement for all those incredible people who have had the tenacity and vision to make this happen. So now for the good stuff. The Summer Festival is well on in the planning stage so watch this space for the brilliant series of events that are planned for June, July and August.  To start things off, we have just had the Photography workshop run by local professional photographer Adam Fairbrother (to whom we are very grateful for his time and patience).  Some expert tuition from Adam The plan was to show the group how to frame and set up the background of their shots to get the best possible results, and to practice on some of the items and vi...

The video from Tuesday's session in repairing the mullions in the Vicar's Vestry. Steve the stonemason talks about the work that he is doing in conversation with Val, our multi-tasking Treasurer.

 We have been very privileged throughout our restoration project here at St. Peters to have had the experience of an extraordinarily skilled Master craftsman and Stonemason, Steve. The blog-team caught up with him (on a typically wet and windy day)  as he  starts the difficult task of renovating the window mullions in the Vicar's Vestry.  The mortar holding it together (the mullion not the Vicar) have become very rotted as a result of water ingress and spider activity. The stonework is very dirty from the general pollution and age (see below). The old rotten mortar, that was in danger of failing completely allowing the window to fall out, has to be sawn out using this lethal instrument.  Steve holding a section of the mullion Steve talked about making the repairs and how the stone is quarried, cut and laid. He said that out of the 4 apprentices who started with him, he is the only one who qualified. He estimates that there are only about 10 stonemasons left in E...