Layer Marney (population 250) is a small rural parish with a farming tradition. If you need help or someone to listen please contact us [email protected] or 01621 819557
If you want to learn a bit more about us our website home page
http://bit.ly/2koRuwc has lots of useful information and links. Other pages on our website that may also be of interest are: http://bit.ly/2kNS6JS
- for more info on our services and
http://bit.ly/2jST1dp - for other events and 5th Sunday venues. The age range of the congregation is broadly from 20 to 80; many being retired, plus several young couples who attend regularly for up to 18 months as part of their marriage preparation. We enjoy the country services: Plough Sunday, a joint Rogation walk and Harvest Thanksgiving are well attended, as is the Nativity with some 150 of all ages, including the choir from Birch C of E Voluntary Aided Primary School, which, with some 120 pupils, is within our team area. We host classical music concerts and we share in team events such as the midnight mass and Christingle,
We share the running of our annual Fete with the village and split the takings between church and village. Our congregation is drawn from a wider area than the geographical parish boundary and benefits from a sense of community that reflects this. The Church is the only public building in the parish. We are connected to the Tower heating system and we have plans to provide a meeting room, kitchen and toilet as well as improving disabled access. We hope that this work will result in a warmer church with improved facilities and that this will encourage the church to be used for more than just Sunday services and weddings. Members are actively involved in Messy Church, in the parish magazine, which goes free of charge to every home, as school governors, the local NHS Patient Participation Group, the Three Villages Community Association (Birch, Layer Breton & Layer Marney villages) and in secular Parish Meetings and local clubs such as the gardening club. We do have rotas (who doesn't?) for Church tasks, but we work as a team and trust one another, so greeting & grass cutting, flowers & food, bells & brides, are all tackled with minimal bureaucracy. (We’ve got two bells, should you wonder!)
Twice yearly, spring & autumn, on a Saturday morning a dozen or so of us give the churchyard a thorough going over. Several of us are trained to assist in services, and with readings, prayers, acting as wedding vergers etc. All this increases our sense of being on our mission together; one that is gathering pace.
