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Harvest Festival
On Sunday 18th October we celebrated Harvest Festival with an all age service lead by our young people and children.
Working together in their Sunday @9 groups they had planned and organised the whole service themselves to include songs and traditional hymns, a quiz, readings and prayers.
We worshipped together singing “We plough the girls and scatter…” along with “The Harvest Samba” and were reminded of the importance of thanking God for His abundant provision and His beautiful creation. Our vicar, Mark, spoke about having faith that God will provide.
The children also reminded us to help those less fortunate than ourselves and all the Harvest produce collected was donated to the Basingstoke Foodbank.​
The church had been beautifully decorated with flowers, harvest produce and there was autumn colour everywhere.Warings Bakery in Bramley had kindly provided a Harvest Loaf
After the service we continued our festivities in Cross House, gathering with several of our community neighbours to share in a delicious Harvest lunch, including a special Harvest Loaf kindly provided by Warings Bakery in Bramley.
Station Garden Wins Gold Award
In 2023 St James’ Church took on responsibility for maintaining the garden at Bramley Station. Hundreds of people use the station each week, so it is nice to add some colour to their commute.
The lack of rain this year has been a challenge so when the garden was entered into the South and South East in Bloom awards, Karen and Rachel, who look after the garden, didn’t think they stood a chance. It was therefore a lovely surprise to be awarded a Gold Award in the Celebration Stations category.
The award ceremony took place at RHS Wisley, and this is a picture of Rachel and Karen receiving their award.
Churchyard tidy-up
A combination of warm autumn sunshine and the promise of bacon sandwiches, encouraged around 15 of us to gather our gardening tools together and tidy up the churchyard. Areas of nettles and brambles were cleared, paths were swept, gutters were cleared and a few graves were uncovered. A big thank you to everyone who took part; it’s amazing what a difference can be made with a few hours hard work and some impressive power tools!
