Ukraine Fundraising Coffee morning
on Saturday 12 March raised £2010.93.
The Wedding Festival raised £1071 for the Wall painting restoration fund and £175 to the Ukraine appeal.
To see all the videos created click YouTube videos
Links to some of videos on YouTube:
Open Day: Bell ringing
Pulpit cleaning: A session cleaning the pulpit
St Sylvester’s in scaffolding by Joe Johnson
St Sylvester’s Blog
January 2023
The story of the crozier and its association with St Sylvester’s Church and two Bishops of Exeter
The crozier Bishop Robert Atwell (of Exeter) brought for the Blessing of St Sylvester’s Church, on Sunday 16 October 2022, was left in the Bishop’s Palace by Bishop Richard Mortimer (Bishop of Exeter between 1949 and 1973) for his successors. Bishop Richard used this crozier at the dedication of the organ in St Sylvester’s Church on 1 December 1950. It was completely by chance that Bishop Robert brought it with him when he visited St Sylvester’s. What a happy coincidence that the same crozier was used albeit 70 years apart.
St Sylvester’s Blog
November 2022
in recognition of the completion of the St Sylvester’s Church Renovation and Community Project, the Harvest Festival Celebration Service at St Sylvester’s Church, Chivelstone, was taken by the Bishop of Exeter, assisted by the Archdeacon and the Rev Mark Neave. This was very well attended by the Start Bay Benefice Mission Community. Traditional hymns were sung with the choir singing ‘Sharing Bread’. The Bishop gave his sermon from the beautifully cleaned pulpit, part of the restoration. He also was very complementary about the work undertaken to restore the Church. After the service there was a buffet lunch much enjoyed by everyone.
The photographs below were taken on the day.
The Banner
St Sylvester’s Blog
30 August 2022
We have now formally completed the Lottery St Sylvester’s Church Renovation and Community Project. As we said in our last Blog instalment, we submitted our Evaluation report to the Lottery at the very beginning of August. We are delighted to say that they accepted this and paid the remaining instalment of our grant two weeks later. The PCC will now decide the next steps on how to continue with the restoration of St Sylvester’s Church.
At 11 o’clock on Sunday 16 October, in recognition of the completion of this project, the Bishop of Exeter will take the Harvest Celebration Service and bless the restoration of St Sylvester’s Church, followed by lunch in the Church.
Because of the church renovations and improvements, the Church is now a very good venue for holding events, such as the wonderful Ash Park Trio concert held on Thursday 25 August. This was a huge success and attended by nearly 200 people. Our grateful thanks go out to Chris Vanderspar, his sister Fiona Simon and their friend Helen Ireland, for giving us such an amazing event.
St Sylvester’s Blog
30 July 2022
The is the penultimate instalment of our Blog about the Lottery preservation project. Below are photographs from the Open Day, the Guides visit and also the wildflower garden.
At the very beginning of August we put in our final papers, detailing everything that we have done since July 2020, and asking for the final 10% of the grant (£38,430).
There is still much work to be done in the Church, but our first priority will be uncovering the 18th century wall paintings and redecorating the interior. This will have to be part of another project and we are pleased to be able to say we have already raised £5,000 from the Headley Trust towards the cost of this work. Much more work also needs to be done on restoring the Rood Screen and improving the heating and lighting, but this will have to wait for a while.
Since our last blog we have had a visit from the Girl Guides to clean all the brass in the Church, and also held our Celebration Open Day on 16 July 2022. On the Open Day we had a visit by Tamryn Nixon from the Lottery, who was very complimentary about everything we have achieved and thanked everyone for all their hard work. We were also lucky to have Robert Waterhouse, Devon Archaeologist, who gave tours of the Church with a lot of historical information. Nicky Bailey, our partner from the South Devon AONB, greatly assisted us on the day. She has been a great help to us throughout the project.
Bell ringing | Jubilee 2022 banner | Robert Waterhouse | Pirate |
Wildflower garden in the graveyard 19 June 2022 | Wildflower garden in the graveyard 29 July 2022 |
St Sylvester’s Blog
31 May 2022
On Saturday 16 July we will be celebrating the Heritage Lottery grant for St Sylvester’s Church in an Open Day between 12 and 4 pm. Please put this date in your diary.
During the restoration the porch was completely rebuilt and now it has also been repainted, as has the west wall inside the Church. The porch doors have been repaired (by Geoffrey Clapp with help from Roger Tucker) and a further small bit of wall painting has been discovered in the porch.
The next event will be a bug hunt in the churchyard on Saturday 18 June. We are letting the grass grow in the churchyard, to promote wildlife but will be cutting paths to guide people to new wildflower areas and the Marana grave.
Below are photographs of the Rector’s chair and kneeler which have been restored and placed in the chancel.
St Sylvester’s Blog
11 May 2022
There are three events to add to the blog: on 20 April we created the wildflower garden in the graveyard; on 23 April there was a dawn bird walk; and over the weekend of the 30 April and 1 May we held the hugely successful wedding festival in the Church.
Wedding Festival 30 April – 1 May 2022
An amazing event organised by Ann Potts and Alison Odell, which had 37 wedding dresses dating from the middle 1930s. Alison had also created a special display describing Ukrainians weddings with photographs taken in Donetsk. There is now a separate page showing many photographs of the wedding dresses on display. £175 was raised for the Ukrainian appeal. The main event raised £1075 to go towards the church wall painting fund.
Dawn Bird Walk 23 April 2022
The bird walk was led by Adam Davison of the South Devon AONB, who identified the bird calls that we were hearing and showed pictures of the birds. We were also lucky to find a barn owl roosting up a tree. The walk was followed by a breakfast in the Church.
Wildflower garden Creation 20 April 2022
We have created two small areas of wildflowers at the top of the churchyard with the help of the South Devon AONB who organised Andrew Price of ParkLife to come and supervise the work. Andrew has since sent a full report on how we should maintain the area (which will soon be attached). In the meantime, he sent us the following information:
“ParkLife supported the local Parish community yesterday at Chivelstone churchyard, working in partnership the South Devon AONB, to help create two wildflower meadows (see attached for more about the seeds and future plan). Both are small plots within the grounds of the churchyard, plot 1 is 18m2 and plot 2 is 12m2, both areas needed to have had the turf removed (as the turf consisted mainly of low bio-diverse grasses), one plots had already been removed by the community prior to the work yesterday. We started by removing the turf from the second plot, which will remove most of the dominating monoculture grass and also helping to remove some of the high nutrients from the soil. Wildflower meadows prefer low nutrient and poor soil conditions, so over time the cutting and removing of the annual growth will help to reduce the built-up nutrients from the soil. This will benefit a more diversity mixture of flowers and grasses.
Once the turf had been removed, both areas needed turning over, raking to a nice tilth and was then resown with a more colourful and diverse mix of plant seeds, some non-native but good pollinator annuals, and some native perennials flowers and grasses. These were then pressed into the soil by tamping into the ground, which involved the group walking over and using the head of the rake to push the seeds into the top of the soil. On the day we have a total of 9 volunteers from the local community join us, including one child helping with raking and seeding the new meadow. On the day the community help totalled 28 hours of volunteered time. These projects are a great way to involve, education and bring the community closure to nature.”
St Sylvester’s Blog
20 March 2022
It has been some while since we added to the Blog but this month we have a lot to write about.
Interpretation
Our long awaited information panels have finally arrived. We have four towers, all movable, giving information on the church and local history. One tower has information provided by the South West Maritime Archaeological Group (SWMAG) on the gold and cannon ball wrecks just off Moor Sands. These are extremely important archaeological sites controlled by the British Museum.
We also have a touchscreen computer with many photographs taken from the East Prawle History Society database on all aspects of the life of the local community. There is a QR code on the touchscreen that allows visitors with smartphones to connect directly to the East Prawle History Society website.
Wall paintings
In March Ruth McNeilage and Carolyn, conservators, came back to St Sylvester’s for an investigatory session to uncover more of the paintings to establish their size. We have six of these paintings and they are now believed to date from the late 17th or early 18th century. Hopefully over the next few years we will raise enough funds to uncover them fully.
The text for this wall painting is almost certainly from Jeremiah XIII, verse 23: Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil |
Plastering
We have obtained permission from the Lottery to spend some of their money on replastering the church in and around the organ. Because of the wall paintings we will also have to have Ruth McNeilage from McNeilage Conservators to ensure that any of the old plaster with wall paintings near the defects is stabilised. This work is scheduled to take place in early June.
On Saturday 19 February we held a soup lunch in the Community Hall to raise more funds for the church conservation project. It raised £270.
Adam Davison, the South Devon AONB bird expert tells us that a very rare American Buff Bellied Pipit was first discovered in East Prawle on the afternoon of the 30th December. It spent most of its time on Maelcombe beach just off the slipway, and it is probably still happily residing there amongst the very similar looking Rock Pipits! Large numbers of birdwatchers from far and wide have travelled to see this LBJ (Little Brown Job) as its only the 5th time that this transatlantic vagrant has been seen in the UK and it’s a first record for Devon.
Pipits are notoriously difficult groups to identify, and the various forms of Rock Pipit and Buff Bellied Pipit are possibly the hardest to recognise. The bird is finding lots of sand flies to eat on rotting seaweed and appears to be dominated by Pied Wagtails and the Rock pipits affectionately known as ‘rockits’.
St Sylvester’s Christmas Blog
23 December 2021
Our architect, Amanda le Page, has signed the completion certificate for the repair works by Westcountry Stonemasons. Therefore, officially the work is done apart from a few small items that remain to be finished early in the New Year.
The kitchenette has been fitted and we show two photographs of it below, one closed up and the other opened up for use. You will see that there is an empty space for a fridge and possibly a dishwasher. We still need more funds to pay for the kitchenette and this extra equipment. It will be extremely useful and proved its worth during the final cleaning of the Church.
The kitchenette, closed up | The kitchenette ready for use | Final cleaning of the Church |
We have received this wonderful card from Humphries & Jones, the conservators of the pulpit. It has added sparkle to celebrate Christmas.
Below are some of the picture taken by Lynne and Emma to help us understand their conservation work. Click each image to expand each picture.
And finally photographs of the Crib Service on Sunday 19 December 2021.
As with all projects, things do not always go as intended. Earlier this week we found that none of the lights in the Church were working. Happily we can report that Stuart Tucker was able to sort the problem out at short notice, so that we will be able to see what we are doing at the services over Christmas.
St Sylvester’s Blog
29 November 2021
The end is in sight. The scaffolding is down. All construction work to the Church should be completed at the end of next week by Friday 10 December (subject to the weather).
The carcass of the new kitchen is in position. We are still trying to raise money to pay for it, so please visit our jigsaw puzzle. We also need extra money to buy a cooker and washing machine intended for the space below the counter on the left hand side.
The new staircase up to the bell ringing chamber has been fitted, as has the new inner West Door.
The kitchen carcass | The new inner West Door with the toilet and shower enclosure on the right | The new stairs to the bell ringing chamber (awaiting hand rails) |
Please see below the wonderfully transformed pulpit – for greater detail of the restoration please Cleaning the Pulpit. Also Lynne Humphries, the conservator, sent us two brilliant documents showing their work. These were put up a while ago but are well worth looking at – it is fascinating to see the delicacy of their work: During conservation and Varnish removal.
St Sylvester’s Blog
27 October 2021
A view of St Sylvester’s Church from above and the newly restored pulpit.
St Sylvester’s Blog
7 October 2021
It’s been a busy time for the Church. The contractors gave us back access to the interior of the Church on 22 September, three days before the Open Day. It needed a great deal of cleaning! Many thanks to the team of volunteers who spent three days returning the Church to a usable state.
On the Saturday 25 September we had our Open Day, which is a Lottery commitment. This was a big success with many people attending, and once again, many thanks to all the volunteers who helped. Thank you also to Nicky Bailey and Adam Davison of the South Devon AONB. See the Open Day page for greater detail.
On Monday 27 September Lynne Humphries and Emma Norris started their work to restore the paintwork of the pulpit. It will take them about three weeks to complete and on Monday, 4 October, they gave us a series of fascinating talks about their work and showed us the beginnings of what the pulpit will look like when they have finished. Please also see Cleaning the Pulpit Special Event page for more detail.
We took a lot of photographs of all three events some of which you will see below.
Cleaning the Church
The Church before cleaning |
|
The Open Day 25 September 2021
Cleaning of the Pulpit 4 October 2021
This was a most extraordinary and exciting event – quite beyond what we expected. The afternoon was divided into five sessions, so that different small groups could get a clear view of the pulpit. Lynne and Emma, the conservators, described in detail their techniques for cleaning off the old varnish to reveal the original colours. They use magnifiers linked to a computer, which showed all the different colours in great detail, including silver and gold leaf. By taking minute paint samples and analysing them they have found that very little touching up seems to have been done, but there are two layers of varnish both of which have discoloured. Once removed the original colours, as painted in the 1480s, will be revealed. They will be sealed with a modern varnish that does not discolour.
St Sylvester’s Blog
9 September 2021
Important dates in September:
18/19 September Ash Park Gardens open; 25 September The Church Open Day for the Lottery Project. Please come and support both events.
A lot has been happening recently. The good news is that the repointing of the tower is three quarters complete. The bad news is that we are not allowed to ring the bells for at least six months whilst the new mortar sets. This will mean that we cannot do bell ringing classes at our Open Day. Therefore, we are arranging for several other musical events to take place instead. These will include hand bell ringing. More details in a week or so.
We have been lucky to obtain a grant from the Beatrice Laing Trust for £5000 to help pay for a kitchenette. Although we need more funds to complete it, we have decided to go ahead whilst the building contractors are on site. This was part of the conditions for receiving the grant. Below is a drawing of the kitchenette.
Chris Jones of Smith & Jones Design is helping us with the new “Interpretation” for the Church. This is all part of the Lottery project. “Interpretation” is the information boards and leaflets that will be in the Church for all visitors. Part of this is a touchscreen computer which will hold a lot of information relating to the Church itself, the community and several other subjects of interest. These can be updated whenever necessary. Below we give a concept drawing of this interpretation. These towers will be movable.
In the previous blog we showed the window being taken out for repair. In this one we show the window slowly being rebuilt.
The Vestry ceiling has been repaired. This was not as straightforward as it might seem, as the plaster work was a relatively unusual reed plastering, which is only undertaken by specialist firms.
Please keep donating to our jigsaw puzzle.
St Sylvester’s Blog
12 August 2021
The good news is that we now have a date for the cleaning of the XVth century pulpit. It will start at the end of September. We are planning to have a further “hard hat day” (for the Lottery) during the week of 4 October, when it will be possible to see the before and after work on the pulpit. As soon as a date is confirmed we will let you know. Originally the pulpit was painted in bright colours, but over the years it has been varnished over to such an extent that the colours hardly show. Once cleaned, the original colours will be seen again. There is only one pulpit that is similar to the one in the Church. It can be found in Holne Church and was restored a few years ago. Ours should look similar when completed. Below please see a photograph of our pulpit and the restored one in Holne Church.
The rest of the blog is largely photographs taken by our architect, Amanda Le Page, of parts of the tower and the stonemasons’ work on the repointing of the tower.
St Sylvester’s Blog
20 July 2021
Please keep donating to our jigsaw puzzle.
Latest photographs
Shipwreck Sailor Stories
As we have already mentioned, as part of our Lottery project Nicky Bailey, our partner from the South Devon AONB, has been working with Sara Hurley to create a film based around the Blizzard of 1891 and the wreck of the Marana, which took place near Start Point. The idea of this film was to circulate it amongst the local schools and ask the children to write the ending. For full details please go to the Shipwrecked Sailors page.
The first part of the film was made in Chivelstone churchyard, next to gravestones of sailors who perished in the storm of 1891 from the wreck of the Marana. Sara’s story telling was based on a character of the wife of Mr Perry, the coastguard. This was sent to all the participating schools with an information pack about the wreck and guidance notes.
Stokenham, Charleton, Salcombe and Malborough Primary Schools took part. Over 120 stories were written and we the judges (Nicky, Sarah, Vicky, Kate and Mark) had to read them all. It was really quite difficult to decide amongst so many. Again full details can be found on the Shipwrecked Sailors page.
The overall winner was Ayla from Malborough:
The winning story was filmed, again being narrated by Sara Hurley in the character of Mrs Perry.
Click on the links below:
St Sylvester’s Blog
3 July 2021
The Hard Hat Day event took place on Tuesday 27 June, with 28 people attending 6 sessions and was a great success. Everyone was asked to complete a survey and below are some of the comments made.
Amazing local craftsmen! Community spirit. An asset that I can now see could now last another 1000 years. How much effect bats have on a project like this. The work involved to rebuild the church porch. Literally rebuilt by hand. Also how a small bat can totally rearrange the order that work is completed. The tremendous community spirit that a small parish can come together to support each other to preserve such a beautiful historic building. The extent of the renovations. The work that has been done to underpin the front porch. The plans for future activities in the church. What Stonemasons can achieve. Underpinning the stone porch. Repair /renewal of stone mullions. Timing of work to coincide with different bat species’ activity. History of the Church. The pulpit is such a unique example. That an 8 metre foundation had to be dug to support the porch – and that it is now completely invisible. We had a very informative visit and we’re delighted to see the work already completed.
|
Very interesting talking to the stone masons, and so impressed at the skill and care they take to get everything exactly like it was those many years ago. It gives you a real insight into the skills those people had especially without the modern equipment that we use today Very impressed by the direct contribution of local farmers to the restoration of this magnificent church – a very large building in a tiny hamlet. One farmer dug a trench around the church to drain the footings; another provided stone for repairing a wall. So interesting to hear from the architect and builder the techniques used to stabilise the building. It was fascinating to watch the stonemasons at work and also to learn about how the bats’ habitat is being protected. This was a well organised visit to bring the parish and wider community into contact with this project. It was informative not only about the technical detail of the restoration but also about the ambitions of the community to make this church relevlent to the community at large in the future. In its new guise the church will support visitors to the area by providing shelter to those walking the coast path and engaging in other outdoor pursuits in this attractive par of the country.
|
Full explanations can be found of the Hard Hat Day page on the website.
Here are two videos taken on the Hard Hat Day (click on the photographs):
Westcountry Stonemasons have now started on repairing the windows. See more photographs below.
St Sylvester’s Blog
16 June 2021
The Church is slowly hatching from the scaffolding, in which it has been living for the last few months. Although it will be several more months before it finally emerges, we are beginning to see the results of all of the work.
Dusk/Bird Walk
The weather for the Dusk/Bird Walk on 27 May was perfect. Adam Davison took twenty one people round the lanes from St Sylvester’s Church, Chivelstone. Everybody enjoyed themselves and felt they had a greater understanding of bird habitats as well as more about the Renovation of St Sylvester’s Church funded by the Lottery.
Film of Shipwrecked sailors
Nicky Bailey, our partner from the South Devon AONB, has been working with Sara Hurley to create a film based around the Blizzard of 1891 and the wreck of the Marana, which took place near Start Point. Nicky has invited various schools to take part in writing the end of the story. The best story will be added to the end of the film.
The four schools involved in writing the ending of the film created by Sara Hurley and Nicky Bailey are : Stokenham Primary School, Charleton C of E School, Malborough Primary School and Salcombe C of E School. All schools have sent us stories from their schools to be judged. There are just over 100 stories. Nicky Bailey, Sara Hurley, Kate and Mark Jennings and Vicky Tucker read all the stories and have agreed the winner and runners up (no easy task). This still has to be finalised, but it has been wonderful to read the stories written with such enthusiasm and gusto. It is hoped to finalise the film shortly and then make the announcements.
Peas for Bees!
A date for your calendar: On Sunday 27 June between 1 and 4 pm there will be the Prawle Bees Discovery Day, on East Prawle Village Green. Bug hunts, wildlife walk and much more including Chivelstone Church Stalls.
Although nothing actually to do with the Church as such, the South Devon AONB are helping to protect East Prawle’s rare and special species. The Six Banded Nomad Cuckoo bee survives only at Prawle Point. The Long Horned Mining bee is also extremely rare. The AONB have produced packs of seeds and instructions so that people can grow the flowers to help the bees. These can be collected from the Piglet Stores. Flowers from the pea family are an important source of nectar and pollen for a range of wild bees and other pollinating insects.
Rob Bunn came on the Dusk/Bird walk and mentioned that he had managed to take a couple of photographs.
JustGiving jigsaw
This has been going really well and so far we have raised £2,515 or 50%. We really need to reach our target, so if you haven’t contributed so far please help us. Click here for the link to the jigsaw.
The Church Fête at South Allington House will go ahead on Sunday 1 August – fingers crossed!
St Sylvester’s Blog
4 May 2021
St Sylvester’s Church is now completely scaffolded. The Church normally looks as above, but not at the moment. It’s a spectacular sight.
Drone Video
Joe Johnson has now created another drone video of the Church, this time completely surrounded in scaffolding. It is wonderful to see the progress being made to the repairs of the Church. The video is now available on St Sylvester’s YouTube. Thank you Joe.
Bird Walk 20 May – postponed until 27 May
Dusk wildlife walk around Chivelstone – numbers strictly limited
Join Adam Davison from the AONB team for an evening walk around some of the paths and green lanes of Chivelstone, catching the birds as they settle down for the day and the bats coming out for the night! The walk is run in partnership with the Chivelstone Church restoration and community project, volunteers from the team will give an update on this exciting project at the start of the walk from the churchyard.
Numbers are strictly limited, please book your place to get your free ticket from the AONB website and bring it with you to register on the day. Anyone without a ticket will not be able to join us on the walk. Register for your free ticket here. This event will be run in line with the current COVID-19 restrictions at the time. Meet at St Sylvester’s Church, Chivelstone, TQ7 2LY.
Hard Hat Day 25 May – postponed until 22 June
We are planning on having a hard hat day on 25 May. Westcountry Stonemasons, who are doing all the work to the Church, will conduct short guided tours to show the work they have been doing and answer any questions. These will be 20 minute sessions, but we can only have five people at a time, so we will have to allot time to anyone who wants to take part. If you are interested in taking part please can you email katejennings02@gmail.com.
The JustGiving jigsaw has been going really well and so far we have raised £2,235 or 44%. We really need to reach our target, so if you haven’t contributed so far please help us. Click here for the link to the jigsaw.
The Church Fête at South Allington House will go ahead on Sunday 1 August – fingers crossed!
St Sylvester’s Blog
31 March 2021
The builders, Westcountry Stonemasons, are getting on extremely well and are currently on target. The structural repairs to the South Porch and the Vestry are nearly complete. See the photographs further below. They are starting to scaffold the tower, which should be completed in about two weeks time, at which time the whole church will still be scaffolded. We hope to take a drone video of this, before they start removing some of the scaffolding from the other end of the Church. At some point in the future we will try to arrange a day when visitors can go and see the Church and talk to the builders.
The JustGiving jigsaw is going really well and so far we have raised £2,020 or 40%.
The Church Fête at South Allington House will go ahead on Sunday 1 August – fingers crossed!
To see the blogs from November 2020 to 3 March 2021 go to the Blog Archive.