Rockland All Saints

First, the good news……. the annual Flower Festival that we were so busy preparing for last time took place over a very hot weekend at the end of June and I am pleased to say that we raised more money than last year. We had fewer arrangers this year, as we were a bit earlier than previous years so some regular contributors were away on holiday but our wonderful boss, Barbara, worked like a Trojan to make sure there were no bare patches in the church and the whole display looked and smelled as wonderful as ever! The girls in the tearoom also worked their socks off in difficult conditions, so a HUGE thank you to them as well. With no water or electricity in the church, even keeping the flowers watered is a challenge, not to mention providing hot and cold drinks and lunches all weekend for a large number of visitors!

The other exciting event recently was also a joyous occasion when the entire school walked to the church on July 4th in order to plant crab apple trees to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Rocklands School (in its present building, that is, as the first village school was built in All Saints churchyard in 1851 but was superseded after Forster’s Education Act of 1870, which required each village to provide a school for its children; it was to be a little while before education became compulsory or free, but it was a start!) The schoolchildren were joined by Little Rocky’s babies and toddlers who came armed with a motley collection of buckets and spades in order to plant one of the trees and the three classes of the school each planted a tree. Julie Dekker (Executive Head) gave a moving speech about the importance of a village, and expressed a hope that in 50 years’ time, when the school is celebrating 200 years, some of the children would come back and look at the trees they planted in 2025. Now, of course, we have the challenge of carting water up the hill every day to water the trees; we have installed water butts round the schoolroom but the small amount of rain we have had hasn’t been enough to even reach the taps! Our particular thanks go to the Grandads and one great-grandad who dug the holes for the trees (‘helped’ by 3 year old Freddie) during the Flower Festival and have been back daily to water and have also put wire guards round them to prevent wild animals from eating them. Fingers crossed that they will all survive (both trees and grandads!!)

We were very pleased that a local builder came and replaced the ceiling in the shed that houses our primitive loo and also made the roof watertight. The walls have been painted and although it’s still very basic, it’s a whole lot less scary using the facilities than before, as the spiders have been encouraged to live in the next shed, for the time being at least!

Now the bad news….we have had a couple of people out to look at the repairs to the vandalised window behind the altar and it is looking as if a five-figure sum will be needed to do a proper job. A small percentage will be covered by our insurance but removing the panel that had the rock thrown through it will compromise the surrounding Victorian window so to repair it so that the window will be there for future generations to look at, will cost a lot of money, which we will need to find ourselves. Many thanks to those who have kindly donated towards the repairs already…..we are looking into CrowdFunding to see if more funds can be raised.

Finally, please note that there is a slight change to the order of services in Rocklands in August as the first Sunday (3rd)will be at All Saints and St Peter’s will be leading the VJ service at the memorial gardens on Wayland Rd at midday on 17th August followed by refreshments at the Village Hall. Please join us if you can. 

How To Find Us

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