December 2020 The Parish Magazine The Parish Church of All Saints Rotherfield Peppard 2 Contacting the clergy or churchwardens Rector The Revd James Stickings Please do not contact at present thankyou Associate Priests The Revd Shelia Walker Telephone 0118 972 4861 Email [email protected] Churchwardens Kathie Anderson Telephone 0118 972 2694 Email [email protected] Valentine de Haan Telephone 0118 972 3806 Email [email protected] Organist and Director of Music David Butler Telephone 0118 972 4065 Email [email protected] Junior Choir Mistress Rebecca Bell Telephone 0118 972 2967 Email [email protected] Flower arranging Ann Butler-Smith Telephone 0118 972 1871 All Saints' Church website: https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/5977/ (Please do not use the website called "allsaintspeppard.org.uk", even though it appears under Google search. This is not the church website and we are taking steps to having it removed) 3 The Parish Magazine In this month’s magazine Contact page 2 Contents page 3 Shelia Walker’s letter 4 Guest editors page 5 Parish Register 6 Sporting Saints 6/7 New Bishop of Dorchester 8 Christmas can’t come too early 9 Valeries Corner 10 Tronitarian Cricket 11 What a year 13 Crossword 14/15 Advertisement 18/19 Service rotas rear cover 4 Dear Everyone, There’s a prayer from Wales which is very relevant for us, perhaps to pray daily, at the moment… ‘High King of heaven, have mercy on our land; revive your church; send the Holy Spirit for the sake of the children. May your kingdom come to our nation, in Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.’ ‘Revive your church…’ may seem an unlikely request when the word ‘survival’ may be more on our minds, but who knows? Certainly, we’re being thrown back on our own resources and being challenged to think again how we can become flourishing, self-sustaining Christian communities. This means recovering - or discovering - the ‘priesthood of all believers’; if there’s one thing the pandemic has taught us, it’s that we’re all in this together, and need everyone’s talents, energies, experience and wis- dom in order to realize all that God intends for us. We are all called (if not collared, to quote a notorious pre-ordination book….) as essential parts of the body of Christ. As Christmas - a rather different Christmas, perhaps - approaches, once again the question for all of us is: how might we be Christ incarnate, here, now? Thank you for all that you are, and are doing. May God, in his mercy and grace, enable us to experience and express in a new way the wonder and blessing of Jesus’ coming among us, then and now. Sheila 5 Guest Editor’s page Hope you are all well and looking foreword to the festive season. This months magazine is slightly late as we were waiting for the latest guidance on the Tier system to sort out Christmas services.. The timings and conditions are now on the back page but please be aware that we are dealing with shifting sands as it were. Keith Atkinson again has supplied a number of articles including one on cricket and various vicars using it to interpret the holy Trinity. He also writes about the saints days around the Christmas period and the reasons for some clubs being called the saints. He also writes about a model rail enthusiast who lived in Church lane. Valarie’s corner is a discourse on books and there importance in life including an amus- ing anecdote of her daughters visit to a large house. There is an edited page from the Diocese which introduces us to the new appointee to the post of Bishop of Dorchester. This includes a potted history and his hopes for the future. There is the usual puzzle from the Parish pump as well as an article by The Revd Peter Crumpler , Christmas cannot come too early. I have added a small article called what a year and Shelia has provided her monthly letter to us all. Thankyou for reading and taking the magazine. If you wish to contribute please e mail your article to [email protected] 6 .Parish Registers 20 October to 20 November 2020 Interment of cremated remains 20 October Molly Rosa Eugenie Lindlaw (85) 3 November Nicholas Frederick Gyngell (67) Sporting Saints Christmas is coming, preceded on 21 December by the Feast of St Thomas the Apostle – doubting Thomas – and followed immediately by St Stephen, the first martyr, St John, apostle and evangelist, the Holy Innocents and Thomas à Becket or St Thomas of Canterbury. But a lot of football is played around the holiday period and a football result in August caused me to wonder about the origins of some football club names. The score was St Mirren 1 St Johnstone 0. They are familiar names, read or heard every weekend in season. Less familiar is TNS or The New Saints. Where does that name come from? And why are Southampton FC and Northampton RFC called the Saints? To begin with St Mirren: the club’s name as spelt is a variant on Mirin (c. 565 – 620), the patron saint of Paisley and founder of a church on the site of the present Paisley Abbey. Mirin was a contemporary of Columba and prior of Bangor Abbey, Co. Down before he made a missionary voyage to Scotland. His feast day is on 15 September. The St Johnstone club plays in Perth. It was formed by members of the local cricket team, anxious to occupy their time after the cricket season ended. In the Middle Ages, Perth, though known as the Fair City, was also St John’s Toun because the parish church is dedicated to St John the Baptist. The Agnus Dei symbol is part of the club badge. TNS or The New Saints has had a chequered history. It has become an amalgamation of clubs from Oswestry in Shropshire and Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain in Powys. As readers may remember from our August edition, St Oswald was killed at Oswestry while the English meaning of the Welsh village name is “Church of Saint Bride”. So when a name was sought for the new club after amalgamation, as both places had connections with saints, The New Saints was agreed upon. Although home matches are played in England, the club is a very successful member of Cymru Premier. St Bride or Brigid of Ireland, who died about 525, was abbess of Kildare. Although there is much uncertainty about her life, there is none about the extension of her cult. There were at least 19 ancient dedications in her honour in England – most famously in Fleet Street – and almost as many in Wales. There are villages in Dumfries and Galloway and in Cumbria (Brydekirk near Annan and Bridekirk near Cockermouth) which remind us of her widespread popularity. Her feast day is on 1 February. Many of today’s sports clubs had their origins in association with the church. Perhaps most significant for cricketers is Pudsey St Lawrence CC (of the Bradford Premier League) where Sir Leonard Hutton and his three brothers began to play the game. The club’s foundation by St Lawrence Church in 1845 was probably an improvement initiative to prevent fighting and drunkenness. Southampton FC can trace its roots to members of St Mary’s Church Young Men’s Association of 1885. The Northampton rugby union club was founded in 1880 from a group of high spirited boys by a sporting curate at St James’ Church. At both Southampton and Northampton, the clubs have retained nicknames from their church associations. 7 A similar story is told of Wakefield Trinity rugby league club where, in 1873, a group of young men from Holy Trinity Church formed the club. In 1895, it became one of the 22 clubs to form the Northern Union after the acrimonious split from the Rugby Football Union. I have refrained from inclusion of places with saint’s names (with the exception of TNS) even though that means omission of St Helens, Lancashire and St Andrews, Fife and their associations with rugby league and golf respectively. However, I will include a different St Helen’s, home of Swansea Cricket Club and Swansea Rugby Club, especially as I can then conclude with another mention of John Arlott. In September, I drew attention to his harvest hymn “God, whose farm is all creation”. Together with Dylan Thomas in his home town, Arlott watched a county cricket match at St Helen’s and his poem, Cricket at Swansea (Glamorgan in the Field), was the result. A short excerpt gives the flavour: In the field of a new Cymric mission With outcricket as cruel as a cat They pounce on the perilous snick As it breaks from the spin-harried bat. Keith Atkinson St Ffraid's Church, Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain Model railway enthusiast from Church Lane In reality, the Henley Standard of 6 November carried the headline “Model railway enthusiast builds old station replica”, the old station being Henley railway station as it used to be. The enthusiast is The Revd Canon Clive Price, now resident in retirement in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Clive was a son of Stanley and Elsie Price of Church Lane, Peppard and is an old boy of Henley Grammar School. His mother sang in the choir of All Saints’ Church where she became verger. Clive also sang in the church choir as a boy. He was ordained priest in 1970 and then served the church in the Dioceses of Oxford, Salisbury and St Albans prior to becoming, in 1986, Priest-in-Charge of St Oswald in Lee with Bingfield and Diocesan Ecumenical Officer, Diocese of Newcastle.