So far this year, we’ve taken three closed churches into our care. They were no longer needed for worship. Two would have been demolished.

Our places of worship are the spiritual investment of generations, and they should survive.

The churches we’ve saved in 2020 are… 
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St Helen's, Barmby-on-the-Marsh, Yorkshire closed in 2007. The earliest record of a chapel here dates to 1388. In 1489, the parishioners petitioned at Rome for a grander church. This was granted. Only the nave survives from this date.

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The medieval tower with timber spire was ruinous by 1773, and was dismantled, rebuilt in red brick and crowned with a copper cupola. The chancel seems to have been added only in the 19th century, when the church was restored in 1854 by Thomas Clarke.

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We are undertaking repairs now – with financial assistance from the Culture Recovery Fund.

We are delighted that we could save this church from the wrecking ball.

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Like St Helen’s, St Lawrence’s, Hutton Bonville, NR of Yorkshire also closed in 2007. It has lain empty since then. St Lawrence’s is a small medieval church that was much altered in the 18th and 19th centuries.

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In 1746 in West Africa, a child is playing on the banks of a stream. He's trying to catch a moorhen. It sounds picturesque, but within seconds this little boy will be abducted. He will be shipped across the globe to North Wales. This is the story of John Ystumllyn.

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He is taken far from his home, far from everything and everyone he knows. Eventually, he arrives in Ynyscynhaiarn, Gwynedd to work for the Wynne family. We don’t know what name his parents had given him, but the Wynnes named him ‘John Ystumllyn’ after their estate.

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If you’ve been watching #AHouseThroughTime you'll have seen the story of Thomas, a black boy who was a 'servant' of a family in Bristol until he ran away in 1759. Boys like Thomas often appeared in portraits and still-life paintings in this period.

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The paintings were displayed as status symbols to highlight a family’s wealth and connections to overseas trade. In 1754, John had his portrait painted. Presumably it hung in the Wynne’s home. A novelty in North Wales, he became known as Jack Du, or in English, Jack Black.

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When John arrived at Ynyscynhaiarn, he was possibly as young as 8, and ‘had no language other than sounds similar to the howling of a dog’. We can only begin to imagine how lonely and terrifying it must have been in a completely unfamiliar place with no way to communicate.

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“When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even”

‘Good King Wenceslas’ is a rather odd carol. Who was Wenceslas, and why do we sing about him at Christmas?

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⛪St Andrew's, Wood Walton, Cambridgeshire

Wenceslas was a 10thC Duke of Bohemia (his name in his native Czech was Vaclav). When he was a teenager, his mother sent assassins to murder his grandmother, and then set herself up as Regent.

When Wenceslas turned 18 he banished his mother and took control, giving half of the country to his younger brother, Boleslaus. But on 28 Sept 935, his brother invited him to a feast, and then murdered him. 😱
It was all very Game of Thrones!

Wenceslas was a devout Christian and was passionate about giving alms to the poor - widows, orphans, even prisoners. After his assassination by ‘Boleslaus the Cruel’, ‘Vaklav the Good’ was immediately venerated as a martyr. He was canonised, and posthumously made a King.

📷 Enfo

Fast forward to 1853, when prolific hymn writer John Mason Neale was looking for a carol for St Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day), a day of charity.