188 Years of The Stanhill Methodist Church

June recalls how the children were quite bored listening to the Master’s Sister singers each year ! One year the lights on the stage floor were covered with coloured crepe paper to give a colourful effect, but the paper caught on fire causing a bit of mayhem !! June said the children liked performing Cinderella. Doreen thought Alladin was the last performance before the At Homes came to an end in the late 1950’s. A tradition enjoyed by everyone for just over 50 years ! April was Spring Cleaning month at church. Everyone had a job to get ready for the First Sunday in May - the Stanhill Sermons. Everyone cleaned their homes too ! It is said some villagers were up at 5am on Sermons’ morning cleaning the flags outside their cottages and hanging up new curtains at the last minute so nobody else would know the pattern and colour before the big day !! Everyone turned up in their Sunday best – the men in top hats and a red rose in their lapels. Police on horseback guiding everyone up to Stanhill and making sure the musicians could get by. An invited minister led the three services – 10:30am in the village, and 2:30pm and 6pm in church. The 10:30am service started in church before processing through the village following the minister and the Sunday school superintendents, stopping at various points to sing hymns and listening to the minister’s message. People in the village brought chairs out for the orchestra to sit on and for the conductor to stand on, so he could be seen by the orchestra ! Health and Safety and Risk Assessment were not in place in those days ! Other memories are of Sundays. Doreen recalled everyone meeting in church on Sunday mornings for open devotions led by the Sunday School Superintendent. After which, dispersing to their own departments - men upstairs in the men’s vestry, ladies downstairs in the Ladies’ vestry, each group listening to a speaker. The children were in the schoolroom and kitchen for their lessons. At the end of their classes they joined together for the Benediction by the Sunday School superintendent, Mrs May McMyn, who stood on the

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