St. Bart’s Chapel and the Masonic Hall, Sandwich

 

The same day that my daughter and I went to St Mary’s Church as mentioned in the last blog, we went to Sandwich to enjoy some of the buildings that were open to the public on the Heritage weekend. We had spent quite some time at St Mary’s and it was a pretty miserable day but that did not deter us. Our first stop was St Bart’s Hospital on the outskirts of Sandwich.

Looking through to the original Medieval part of the building.

The Hospital was built in about 1190, as a stopping place for pilgrims making their way to Canterbury on pilgrimages, and today consists of the Chapel built in 1217 surrounded by 16 small almshouses which are allotted to the elderly of the town.

I have visited the hospital on a previous heritage weekend, and was very happy to revisit the Chapel with Alice. The Chapel has been extended at some time but the original Medieval portion is still there, and this is one of the most peaceful and beautiful of the many churches I have visited.

The Medieval part of the Chapel

After a good look round and a nice chat with the ladies who were on duty in the Chapel that afternoon we had to decide where to go next. I was very keen to show Alice a private home called Richborough House which was open for the weekend. This house is of Tudor origin with Georgian additions, and is just beautiful. I was allowed to take photos but as this is a private home I will not share the photos, for obvious reasons I think.

When we had finished in Richborough House we had just enough time to visit one more building, Alice wanted to have a look round The Masonic Hall so off we went. We had a lovely gentleman guide round  this building, who told us a lot about the origins and charity work of the Masons. He also allowed both of us to sit in the Grand Masters Chair and Alice was allowed to bang the gavel, which she did very loudly!!

In all we had a really interesting day, by the time we had finished at the Masonic Hall all we wanted was a cup of tea and a piece of cake, so went along the road to a lovely little tea room, where we got our cup of tea and piece of cake

St Mary’s Church, Walmer

There are two churches called St Mary’s in Walmer, Old St Mary’s and the new church also called St Mary’s which is the one I am going to talk about here. Every year in September there is an Heritage Weekend where you can go and look round various buildings which are usually not open to the public, or are free to enter. This year the Heritage weekend coincided with a flower festival at St Mary’s Church, which was not part of the Heritage weekend but my daughter and I wanted to see the flowers so we started our day with a visit there.

I had forgotten what a lovely Church St. Mary’s is, it is a few years since I had been in there, probably the last time was when either my son or daughter had done a Carol Service while they were at Junior School!

The church decorated with flowers was a breath taking sight, a lot of hard work had obviously been done by a lot of people. The white lilies banked by the Altar were just amazing as were the flower decorations on the pillars.

In a small side chapel we found the Poppy Man, which I think is a brilliant idea, the photo has been passed on to my friend who is writing a book about the First World War, another photo of mine in print maybe

What else did we see that day? You will find out in the next blog…

Keep warm everyone

Finally catching up!

 

I am here at last! My laptop, nicely repaired came back last Wednesday. I have spent the last week sorting things out, putting back all my photos and generally getting the laptop the way I want it. I am just about there now! I have quite a few blogs waiting in the wings but thought that for this blog I would just use a few odds and ends photos that I have been taking over the last couple of months, just to prove that I haven’t been lazy lol

It has been a busy time, my daughter has now started her new job and is settling in well. She is coming down tomorrow for the weekend, which will be lovely

I hope to finally get round to visiting some of your blogs, until I do keep warm everyone

Remembrance