HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I wonder: when you greet someone with those words, where do you put the emphasis, the stress?  Partly, that may depend on your nationality:  I've noticed that American English-speakers stress ‘happy' or ‘new';  Brits tend to put the emphasis on ‘year'.   Few people, however, put equal stress on each and every word, thus wishing their hearers, quite literally, a ‘stress-free' new year.

After our somewhat lengthy journeys around parts of the West Country over the past few months, let us return nearer home as we visit the church of St Nicholas, Steventon.  If you are a Jane Austen fan you cannot afford to miss visiting this church.

The first thing that strikes you when visiting this church is the magnificent tower, which stands over 100 feet high.  It was completed by 1350 and is one of the most beautiful medieval church towers in North Devon. 

First I want to say how delighted I am to be coming to Hale with Badshot Lea.  This is a parish which seems to me to want to combine the best of our Anglican tradition with a hopeful, prayerful reaching out to people who are yet to be convinced of the healing and joyful love of Jesus Christ in their lives.

This church is well worth visiting if you are in North Devon.  It is a large building with plenty of history.  In 1645, during the battle of Torrington, the biggest battle ever fought in Devon, Fairfax and Cromwell defeated the Royalist army.  The Royalists, who held the town, had stored 80 barrels of gunpowder in the church.  The Roundheads, later looking for a suitable place for their prisoners, shut them in the church.  Somehow the gunpowder ignited and blew up most of the church, resulting in a great loss of life.  Outside the church door is a long cobbled mound, and this covers a mass grave.  As you stroll around the churchyard you can see many quaint epitaphs.

This is the Collect for Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. It begins by reminding us that God has created everything - including you and me - and that he does not hate his creation - a rather negative way of saying that he loves it. So, God loves us. And because he loves us, he longs to forgive us.

Opened in 1844, St John's Hale was designed by Benjamin Ferrey (1810-1880), a pupil of the famous architect Pugin. The church was founded by Bishop Charles Sumner (1790-1874), Bishop of Winchester, whose official residence was Farnham Castle and who, with his wife, Jennie, lies buried in the churchyard, below the East wall.

St Mark's Church was built in 1883 as a daughter church of St John's, at the instigation of members of the congregation who found it difficult to get to St. John's in bad weather. The land was given by Bishop Sumner who was the Bishop of Winchester at the time. The community helped by collecting flints from the common to build the walls. Local children acted as the models for the wall paintings in the chancel.