The Priory Church of St Mary and the Holy Cross is open daily between 10am and 4.00pm for individual prayer and contemplation.

Priory Church of St Mary and the Holy Cross is open for worship  as listed under Services.

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Dear Friends and Parishioners,

We enter now a sacred time when the northern hemisphere wakes to new life and delight, if we will let it.  It is always sad to witness the spoiling of the good, whether that’s people or buildings, or places of beauty, and sadly so many devote their energies to just that spoilation.

This is where the sacred comes in.  God is, God reigns, God purposes.  The fulfilment of his purposes is not yet come to pass but we’re well on the way.

In the sacred and scarred land where Christ Jesus walked, laughed, bathed, enjoyed his fellows and gazed at mountains and over the lakes, he there ensured outside the walls of ancient Jerusalem the remaking of all things unto God.  He dealt with sin and pain and suffering and disappointment, and so many since then have had their lives shaped by both sacrifice and resurrection.  For after his crucifixion and burial in a rock tomb, Christ rose from the dead and the world was changed.

It is pitiful that humanity has not entirely taken this to themselves.  Any act of cruelty is to spit in the Garden of Resurrection.  It is then for us to recreate that Garden in the wastes of modernity and to find ourselves delighted by simplicity and beauty.

May I wish you a most joyful Eastertide and a thumping good Spring and Summer.

Yours very truly,

Ian Whittle

Beneath the Hazel’s Dappled Shade

Beneath the hazel’s dappled shade,/ A partridge stirs the morning glade./ His russet breast, a soft delight,/ Catching the first kiss of light.

Through dew-kissed grass it softly weaves,/Among the hawthorn’s budding leaves./ No hunter’s call, no hurried sound – / Just whispered winds and sacred ground.

And on the hill where heather grows,/ The partridge nests as twilight glows. / A fleeting heart in Ireland’s green,/ Both shy and proud, yet rarely seen.

David Dumpleton and John Ridley