CROP OF HARVEST FESTIVITIES

  Goostrey's parish church has organised one of its most ambitious harvest

  festivals  since its foundation more than 800 years ago.

   St Luke’s is holding the week-long celebration of harvest-time in the run up to the church’s  traditional harvest thanksgiving service this coming Sunday (September  30).

Harvest in the sun!

  With so much rain lashing down it has not been much like harvest but each  day this week is being marked in the church with an event and displays. 

The  displays of  harvests of  grain, ocean,  garden, earth and flocks is also  providing

   children from Goostrey Community School and other local schools with the opportunity to take part in hands-on activities  such as pottery making,  weaving woollen thread, sowing seeds and even making a boat to illustrate a Bible story from the Sea of Galilee.      

  The event called Harvest Experience, which is being arranged by a team of volunteers, is based on the success of the Easter Experience held at St Luke’s two years ago.

  Adults are being invited to take part in activities in the church linked to the harvest displays on Thursday between 7.30 pm and 9 pm.

    A harvest supper open to all together with  a folk band in the village hall on Saturday has also been organised as part of the celebrations.

    The vicar, the Revd Ian Gregory, tells me the events will focus on the religious  significance as well as the practical aspects of the different harvests.

   “Harvest festival is one of the most important times in the rural calendar and as such it was felt it was more deserving of attention during the week leading up to our celebration week-end,” he says.

    St Luke’s was built around 1220 and rebuilt in the 18^th century when the timbered church  was demolished, but a place of worship may have existed on the site since the Anglo Saxons.

 The first recorded vicar was Abel in 1220 and a yew tree in the churchyard has been identified as 1,200 years old.