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This afternoon at St Nicholas the opportunity arose for people to go up the tower, learning about the history on the way and seeing our amazing churchyard and community garden, as well as the surrounding countryside.

This afternoon, we welcomed some enthusiastic children and families. Activities included trees, scarecrows, a bird hunt, looking at rocks and chocolate rock making. A hunt for fossils revealed some in the masonry of our lovely church.

St Nicholas is sharing our heritage journey in 2024 with our calendar. Each month illustrates different aspects of our conservation building work and some of our heritage activities.

On sale now for £5. Contact Karen on 07866 572209 or at kjndon@aol.com

An interested group spent the last two days on a trip to Magdalen College Archives. Much of Willoughby paid rent to the college which owned great swathes of land here and around the country. The old records for the parish are stored in towers on the college site.

St Nicholas’ Heritage Weekend was a great success in spite of the rainy weather on Saturday. The bell ringing was a pleasure to listen to and Sunday’s sunshine provided the backdrop for a lovely ‘Songs of Praise‘ service. The children’s choir sang at the service and their cleverly reworded song before the teddy bears’ parachute jump was very special.

One of the activities in our bid to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, was to uncover overgrown gravestones, which had been laid flat and were covered with grass, and to carry out research into the people buried in the graves.