St Mary's Coleorton
Parish News May 2020

Letter from the Rector

Online worship services

• Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings at 8am we have ‘prayer for the day’.
• Wednesdays and Sundays at 10 (W) and 10:30 (S) we have a communion service, Sunday’s has singing but Wednesday is a said service.
• Every evening at 9pm.we have a reflective time of compline, which is latin for completion, with prayers to end the day.
• Also 21st May - Ascension Day - a service of Holy Communion at 7.30pm

These are streamed live on the St Helen’s Ashby Facebook page and later re-posted to St Mary’s.
You can find Prayer for the Day on Facebook by liking the 'St Mary's and St John's, Coleorton' page.  For the live services you need to like the 'St Helen's Church Ashby de la Zouch' page.

I have orders of service for each of these acts of worship that I can send to you if you would like.  Please email me at  revmarygregory@aol.co.uk.

God bless you

Reverend Stewart writes

We are currently living in unprecedented times, people’s lives as they have known it have been thrown completely upside down. Focuses have changed, the definition of ‘Hero’ for our young people is less about a multi millionaire pop start or footballer, and more about the humble NHS staff and many other everyday ‘Heroes’.

Some of these changes may be helpful, retrospectively we can appreciate things that perhaps we have taken for granted. As a Christian, I am thankful for God, the unchanging, the always present and all loving heavenly father.

Things change, God remains, things seem unpredictable, God remains.

It is my prayer that you know God’s peaceful presence, whatever you are facing in this time of lockdown.

Rev Stewart

Messages from Messy Church

"Katie and Annabel (Mum) are missing everyone from Messy church. We've  made an Easter cake and nests. Katie and Mike had an Easter egg hunt around the farm, we also had fun stone painting and making a Papier mache balloon. Hope you're all well Xxx"

Wartime Memories from the Derbyshire Tomboy

Some of the early information, when I was a baby, was passed on to me by my Mom. My father was an unknown person who I only saw when he was on leave from the Navy for the next 5 years.

Mom was paid £1 and 5 shillings a week Navy pay. Unless you have lived through those war years no-one knows how hard it was, for those women and children to get by on such a small amount of money and meagre rations. I do believe that even though you were a small child, every event and hardship your mother went through included yourself. You seemed to be included in all types of conversation because it always centred on "What can I give you to eat?" and "What can I make for you to wear?" So mothers spoke to their children like adults. I think this is why I can remember so much about what happened during those war years and after.

People were told to apply for air raid shelters. We lived five miles from Derby and because of the heavy industries manufacturing tanks and arms, Rolls Royce making planes, British Celanese producing parachutes we were well in the firing line. So Stanton Pipe works were manufacturing large underground water pipes to be used as shelters which were stronger than tin ones. Large craters were dug in your garden away from the house and the pipe lowered in, then the top covered over with soil. My father was on leave so he built a door on the open end of the shelter and two benches inside, with steps leading from above ground to enter in case of air raids. Mom added one or two items we might need, candles, matches, cups, spoons. Food or a flask would have to be brought with you. Between Ockerbrook and Spondon the R.A.F. lookout base was built with long Nissan huts used as barracks for the crews who would warn of planes heading from the East coast inland for Derby. This was where the sirens would warn us from. 

The Germans were sinking the supply ships coming from America with tanks and food supplies and that made our rations very meagre - 2oz margarine, 2oz lard, 2oz cheese, 2 eggs, 4oz sugar used for cooking, saccharine tabs as a sugar substitute in tea. The ration was 4oz tea - which was considered very important. Many a time we had used our tea so the tea leaves were dried and used again. 

Queues were another thing. Women would walk miles because they had heard there was a shipment at a shop. Mom and I would walk all over, then join a queue standing in the pouring rain not knowing what for, but hoping it had not all gone when we got there. Often it would be whale or horse meat or a tin of pilchards. Everyone was very thin. The children were issued with jars of Virol, a malt extract, and rose-hip syrup. Sometimes we were so low on food dinner was bread and dripping. Mom would scavenge up the fields for mushrooms, crab apples and blackberries. Of course the vile powdered egg – hens eggs were like gold dust. Mom knitted all the spare time she had. Most of my jumpers and cardigans had been re-knitted several times. Hems were let down and it was nothing to see kids with faded marks on their clothes. Women had no nylons so they painted their legs with a solution of gravy browning.

By 1944 I had reached the age of six and remembered all that went on. One event I have never forgotten. It was a Monday which was washing day and I had been watching while Mom did all the stages of her washing, trying not to get in her way. It was sunny so after the mangling Mom picked up her wicker clothes basket and we went to the front yard to peg out the washing. Mom had on a cross-over apron and her hair in a turban. I was passing small items to her when we heard this roaring sound coming from the area of Derby. It got louder but we could not see anything. Then there it was - a Spitfire swooping over the village very low and heading right for our cottage. His canopy was open and we could see him. He had a brown leather jacket and goggles. He put his hand up and waved to us then he was gone, most likely to his base in Lincolnshire. I have never forgotten Mom and I jumping up and down and waving to this unknown pilot and remembering that special noise of its engine and the smell it left behind when it had gone.

Read Marian's full story and some more war-time memories on the Coleorton Heritage Group website  www.coleortonheritage.org.uk/wartime-memories-derbyshire-tomboy.html