|
|
|
|
Worship at home on Sunday 16 August
Please see this page of the church website and join in worship at 10.00am led by our minister, Revd Dr David Dickinson online.
|
|
|
Christian Study - At this page on the church website you will find links to both the Junior and Adult webpages from Roots on the Web, a resource used by some departments in Junior Church.
|
|
Stewarding on Sunday mornings
If you've been in church in the last couple of weeks, you will have seen that we've changed our stewarding arrangements. We now have a steward stationed at the Cheam Road entrance to offer a welcome, keep an eye on the hand sanitiser and any queue, and admit people to the church in a controlled way. A second takes test and trace information. The third offers service sheets, supervises the offering and directs people towards their seats. A fourth ensures that individuals and groups are seated in accordance with distancing requirements. All help with the changeover between services, making sure that the church is cleared and prepared before a new congregation enters.
All this is rather different from what we're used to - but it seems to be settling down. Now that new duties have been defined and tested, we are looking for additional stewards to spread the load.
If you could help with any of these tasks, David Jones would be pleased to hear from you. Please contact him either by email at dej7ld@gmail.com or by phone on 020 8643 5438. (Please be ready to give your name, as a call screening service is in use.)
|
|
Coffee and Chat
As we come out of lockdown, our church services will remain unable to include an opportunity for chat over coffee. So the Coffee and Chat group, which has been meeting via Zoom after the recorded service each Sunday, is now going to continue on Zoom during August on Tuesday evenings at 7.30pm.
If you would like to join some familiar faces you would be welcome. Please contact John and Deborah Wroe 020 8642 9064 or john.p.wroe@gmail.com.
|
|
|
Dial a service! If you know anyone who would like to be able to listen to our recorded services, but who doesn't have internet access, we now have a solution for them too - please let them know! Simply phone 020 3319 1332 at any time and listen to hear a recording of the most recent service at Trinity. The cost is that of a local call, which for many people will be free.
|
|
|
|
Call after 1.00pm on Sunday by which time that morning's service should be available - note this timing will change once services are again being held in the Trinity building..
|
|
Good news
There are two new items of news on the Good news page of the church website here. One is helping the church's finances.
|
|
When the wrong materials end up in recycling waste, it’s much less likely that the materials will be recycled, meaning that sadly they could end up in landfill, along with any other waste they’ve contaminated. Here's how to ensure your empty bottles, bags and boxes do actually make it through the recycling process.
|
|
|
- Rinse food packaging: Traces of food (unless it’s just a grease stain) can contaminate the recycling system, so you should always rinse tins, pots and packaging prior to popping them into a collection box.
- Remove tape: You should remove all sticky packing tape from cardboard before placing it into a recycling bin.
- Tin can lids are recyclable if you pop them inside the clean, empty tin, and aerosol cans, empty or not are recyclable . You can also leave paper labels on tins as these will be recognised and dealt with separately.
- Detergent and cleaning product bottles are recyclable, and you can leave any triggers in place.
- Plastic bottles: These should be emptied, rinsed, squashed and have lids put back on ready for recycling – this is because loose lids are often too small to be detected in the recycling process.
Sutton Council has a handy A-Z of recycling here
|
|
|
Job Opportunity at Sutton Foodbank
|
|
|
The Summer Supplement - 1620 and all that
|
|
|
There is something unforgettable when an ocean-going liner, to the accompaniment of a military band and a cheering crowd of well-wishers, casts off her moorings, glides (or, in this case, chugs) down Southampton Water, turns right before running aground on the Isle of Wight and heads for the open sea, leaving the Needles as the last recognisable English landmark fast disappearing into the afternoon sky. That was my experience on 22nd May 1958 as a young passenger on board Her Majesty’s Troopship Dilwara with the prospect of a 28-day passage to Singapore where my father had been posted by the RAF for the next two-and-a-bit years. But my emotions were not overshadowed by feelings of trepidation which must have been mixed with the relief the Pilgrims must have had knowing that they were at last on their way to the New World when Mayflower and Speedwell slipped their moorings near the West Gate of Southampton’s old town on the 15th of August 1620.
|
|
|
We will visit Dartmouth and Plymouth in the next two episodes of this Summer Supplement, but today we will cast a brief eye over Southampton and explore a little into the manner of the Pilgrims' voyage. I have not been able to find any accounts of their departure, so must assume it was a relatively low-key affair. The name of John Alden crops up in some sources as a member of the crew taken on in Southampton and of Stephen Hopkins, who with wife and three children joined the party of Pilgrims there. Let's hope there were some family members, whether related to crew or to passngers, gathered on the quayside to wave them off. Almost certainly there was no brass band!
|
|
|
Close by the West Gate of the old town walls is the Mayflower Park. This is located on land reclaimed from mudflats using material excavated from the River Test when the Western Docks were constructed in the 1930s. Across the road and standing in a rather lonely spot next to the old town wall is the 50 feet (15m) high Mayflower memorial, erected in 1913.
|
|
|
|
It was intended to mark the exact spot where the Pilgrims boarded a dinghy to ferry them across to where the two little ships were at anchor. Sorry, but neither the Mayflower (length 30m approx) nor the Dilwara (150m) can compete with the P&O cruise ship Britannia (330m and 15 passenger decks) seen rather hazily in the distance when preparing to sail on her maiden voyage in 2015. (photograph below).
|
|
|
It is worth mentioning the arrangements whereby the Mayflower was chartered for the voyage. The whole operation to emigrate to America had been overseen by the Separatist community who had fled from England in the dying years of the 16th century and settled in Leiden in the Netherlands, under the pastoral oversight of Rev John Robinson. Although they were free to worship in their own way, the menfolk were barred from joining the Dutch trade guilds and companies, so were reduced to finding employment as unskilled labourers and suchlike. Money was always hard to come by, and life in Holland was unexpectedly onerous.
The prospect of starting a new life in the New World was appealing, and the London-based Virginia Company had been granted the right by King James to colonise a significant part of the eastern seaboard of America in the name of the Crown. In 1617, the Leiden church appointed two of its members, John Carver and Robert Cushman, to open negotiations with the Virginia Company, which at the time was very anxious to find additional settlers for their colony in Jamestown in present day Virginia. For various reasons, Jamestown was abandoned in the period 1700 - 1710, and now all that is left are archaeological remains to remind visitors of its original foundation. A grant of land was obtained by the Pilgrims in 1619, but negotiations with the Virginia Company continued until only a few days before Mayflower and Speedwell departed Southampton!
|
|
|
"The first English settlers at Jamestown came prepared to fight the Spanish"
Source: National Park Service, Jamestown - Sidney King Paintings, Colonists Landing at Jamestowne
|
|
Under the contract, the Pilgrims were required to purchase a boat (this was to have been the Speedwell) which could be used for fishing once the Pilgrims had reached America. It also set out terms as to the period during which the Pilgrims were to work on behalf of the company and dispatch the results of their labours back to England. So far as I can make out, the company chartered the Mayflower as late as June 1620. When she left Southampton, the passengers were a mix of Pilgrims and non-pilgrims (“strangers”). The latter were individuals and families who had either paid for their own passage or who were being funded by the Virginia Comapny who would recoup their investment from the profits made by the first settlers in their American colonies.
It is reported that the first shipment of goods sent back to Europe by the Pilgrims was of beaver and otter skins, oak, walnut, and sassafras (a tree native to America whose timber can be used for ship building and whose roots, bark and foliage put to culinary and medical uses). Sadly, the cargo, worth £500 in those days, was lost to French pirates.
I end this episode with another link to “London Unattached”, if you want a guided tour around Southampton and the Mayflower connections.
https://www.london-unattached.com/southampton-mayflower-connections/
SM - Ed
|
|
Feedback
We would welcome your feedback with ideas, suggestions for improvement, constructive criticism and questions - simply reply to this newsletter.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
