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MAY
Blow trumpet, for the world is white.
May is the month of blossom, generally white but if you look you will see different whites. Spot the lovely cherry, “hung with bloom along the bough” as our very own Shropshire poet, A E Housman wrote. The cherry is soon joined by the apple trees, white tinged at the edges with pink, the crab apple and even the pear is worth a quick look at. The April hawthorn is still in bloom and will be changing whites until June
So with good reason to get out and about this month, with milder weather and hopefully some sunshine too, what is your excuse? I have a few suggestions about where you might go. Given what I am involved with, it will not surprise you that the local church and their churchyards are top of my list. There is so much to see and hear in these places and it is all free for you.
The Churchyard Task Teams from Caring for God’s Acre will be all over the County as usual this month, and anyone is welcome to turn up and take part or just watch what is going on.so from the 5th onwards they will start May in Clungunford and the following day in Acton Scott. Clungunford is like a large field so some scythers will be cutting grass, trying to avoid the flowers still in bloom like the cowslips which we are so fortunate to have in abundance in Shropshire. In Acton Scott there should be bluebells still in bloom and ivy to cut back.
The following week the teams will be in Stoke St Milborough on Tuesday the 12th and and Kynnersly Cemetery on Thursday just north of Telford. At Stoke St Milborough you can check out the churchyard and the nearby Holywell, dedicated to St Milburgha, our own Shropshire saint. Culmington is the place to be the following week.(19th). This church has Saxon origins in abundance, which means you can stand by a wall of herring-bone bricks that are 1500 years old and still standing. I am sure embroiders and needleworkers will recognize this pattern immediately. (nearby Diddlebury has an even bigger wall like this) On the Thursday 21st the team will be scything the ground in Cressage and the same will happen in Knowbury on the 26th and Buildwas of the 28th. There is so much going on and just down the road from many of us.
In the north of the county, the church at Petton will be celebrating the feast day of one of their saints on the 16th May. It is an extraordinary buildingwhich only acquired a dedication to Saint Raphael and St Isadore as a treat for the millenium but goes back 4 hundred years. It has had all sorts of additions and changes in that time too. Next year it will celebrate its 400th birthday.
I could go on for ever. I will be starting May on a coach trip organized by Shropshire Churches Tourism Group visiting 4 churches and a pub for lunch, and all for £35. Another outing planned for September/October. Maybe I will meet you on it but in the meantime get out and about in your local area enjoying the treasures we all too often take for granted.
Anni Holden Calver,
Secretary of Shropshire Churches Tourism Group
Trustee of Caring for God’s Acre
Photos, AP. Right: Petton churchyard in May. Left: Herringbone masonry at Diddlebury .
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