St Andrew's, Dearnley

St Andrew's, Dearnley and Smithy Bridge

St Andrew's, Dearnley is currently gearing up for one of our biggest fund-raising events of the year, the ever-popular Autumn Fair, which will be held in Church from 11am to 1pm this coming Saturday, October 18.

Helpers are needed please from 10am on Friday to assist with the setting up of stalls etc and we ask that donations of bottles, chocolates and tombola prizes are left in church or at the vicarage tomorrow (Wed) night or on Friday any time after 10am.

The Fair will be opened by our vicar, the Rev Canon Sharon Jones, supported by children from the school choir at Holy Trinity Primary, Littleborough.

Refreshments will be available and there will be lots of things to do and take part in, such as raffles, draws and tombola.

The most popular buys are always home-made cakes, biscuits, scones, buns and fruit pies, while the chocolates and bottle stalls are traditionally well-supported too.

We are currently preparing for the installation of a new heating system in Church to follow up all the extensive work we had done to completely revamp the West end, including the creation of a new and bigger parish room and an upper first-floor area, accessed by lift and stairs.

The old boilers have been removed and we are expecting the new ones to arrive soon, but in the meantime we will endeavour to keep everybody warm by using temporary industrial heaters which should be fully operational in time for Sunday’s Sung Eucharist at 9.30am.

That service will be followed by Holy Matrimony and Baptism at 11.30am and Holy Baptism at 1pm.

Anyone wishing to order Tradecraft Christmas Cards, all profits from which go to charity, should make their requirements known on the list in the parish room.

We are also seeking requests for hymns, which will be sung at our forthcoming ‘Songs of Praise’ event, to form part of our St Andrew’s Day celebrations at the end of November.

We can’t guarantee that all requests will be sung, obviously, but we will do our best to accommodate as many as possible. Please see Ada with your requests.

Date for your diary: Saturday, November 8; 4pm start, ‘Lest we Forget’, music, art and poetry by our primary schools and Junior Blast.