All Saints Margaret Street.

Dear friends,

I am pleased to announce plans for a series of parish lunches on four Sundays through the late summer and autumn which should offer the opportunity for people to socialise and get to know each other better after the High Mass.

The idea is that a range of different ways of having lunch together will be explored which should should be inclusive of most pockets but which also keep the work needed to organise lunches at a manageable minimum.

On Sunday 27th August, we have been invited by John McWhinney and Paul Weston to share a barbecue in Wapping where their boat is moored at Hermitage Moorings (16 Wapping High Street, E1W 1NG). The barbecue will cost £15 per head (to be paid in cash on the day) and participants are asked to bring a bottle. Because of space, this lunch is restricted to 15 people, so please email our parish office to book your place. I am very grateful indeed to Paul and John for organising this parish lunch.

There will also be two further lunches that take place in local restaurants in the West End on Sunday 10th September and Sunday 1st October.

The lunch on Sunday 10th September will take place at 1.30 pm in Pierre Victoire on Dean Street and will be in honour of Fr Michael Bowie, who will be visiting and preaching that day.

The lunch on Sunday 10th September at 1.30 pm will be at Pizza Express on Dean Street and will be in honour of our guest preacher that day, Mthr Katie Hacker-Hughes.

On both these occasions, the cost of the two course lunch will be £25 paid ahead of time to the parish office, with participants buying their own wine on the day. Places at both lunches will be limited to 20, and will be apportioned on a first come, first served basis. In order to book a place on either or both lunches, please email our parish office.

On Sunday 5th November, there will be a further parish lunch. This will be a bring and share buffet in the church to celebrate our All Saints’ Festival Sunday. Closer to the time appeals will be made for food, and we are always grateful for the plentiful response we usually receive on these occasions from so many generous parishioners.

I hope these events give people the opportunity to spend time together, to get to know each other better, for newcomers to be welcomed, and for our parish community to grow in love and fellowship. Do put them in your diaries and book them as soon as possible through the parish office!

Fr Peter

Cedric Stephens

It has been agreed that Cedric Stephens, our Head Server, will step down and retire from being Head Server and from all serving duties on Sunday 6th August 2023 in order to hand over to new leadership within our serving team.

I want to thank him for the many years of faithful service he has given to our parish. His contribution to the life of All Saints’, and particularly to its liturgical life, is immense. He has been Head Server for 33 years. No other individual has exercised any office for that long in the entire history of our parish. We all owe Cedric a huge debt of thanks.

He will be handing on liturgical leadership of our parish to a group of servers whom he has expertly trained and formed. I have not doubt that the transition to new leadership within our serving team will be accomplished seamlessly thanks to his efforts.

An extensive consultation has taken place over the past few months involving all the servers in order to garner their thoughts an opinions, and to think about the future of how our serving team is organised. I want to thank them for the time they have all devoted to participating in that process.

I would like to thank our servers, and especially Cedric, for all they contribute to the life of our parish through their service of the liturgy of the people of God. We are grateful to Cedric for his sterling service to our parish and for all he does to support our life together.

I am sure as many parishioners as possible will want to be present on Sunday 6th August, Cedric’s last Sunday as Head Server, to thank him for his extraordinary contribution to our parish.

Evensong on 16th July: Byrd’s “Great” Service

2023 is the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, who is regarded by many as the finest of the numerous composers writing for the liturgy in the late 16th and early 17th century.

Byrd’s music features regularly in the lists at All Saints, but to mark his anniversary year, there will be a rare performance of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis from the ‘Great’ Service at Evensong and Benediction on Sunday July 16th.

The work was composed towards the end of the 16th century for the Chapel Royal, one of the few foundations able to offer the resources and expertise required for its performance; it is among the most magnificent works ever conceived for the liturgy.

It’s not a work which receives many liturgical performances, and this may well be the first time it has been sung at All Saints; it may not appear on the music list again for quite some time.

Do come and hear this great masterpiece!

Young Adults Group

Fr Alan is organising two events for our younger parishioners over the coming weeks.

On Saturday 19th August there will be a hiking trip to Lewes and the South Downs. The walking group will leave London around 10 am and the trip will last most of the day, returning in the early evening. Please be in touch with Fr Alan if you are interested in going.

On Thursday 7th September Fr Alan will host a dinner for our younger parishioners at his home from 7.00 pm. Please email him if you would like to attend.

Evensong for our keeping of the Assumption last year. Do be sure to put Sunday 13th August at 6.00 pm in your diaries and join us for our procession of Our Lady down Oxford Street.

News from the Friends of All Saints’

The Friends of All Saints’ has grown by six new members over the past month. Our total membership now stands at 189.

Our celebration of the Friends of All Saints’ Sunday a few weeks ago offered an opportunity for us to encourage supporters of All Saints’ who may live outside London or who are not able to worship with us regularly to join the Friends. Joining the Friends of All Saints’ is also particularly appropriate for our online worshippers and those who live abroad. You can find further details and the link for subscribing to the scheme here.

Our Friends scheme was rebooted and renewed last year.  Of those 189 members,106 are “Friends” contributing £25 a year, 79 are “Benefactors” donating at least £120 a year, and 4 are “Patrons” giving £1000 a year.

This means the Friends of All Saints’ currently contribute just under £16,000 a year to our parish’s finances. We are hugely grateful for the generosity this represents. The Friends have had a huge difference to our parish finances – many thanks indeed!

We were delighted to welcome (from left to right) former Director of Music Harry Bramma, Jean Castledine and Elaine Norman to last Sunday’s High Mass.

Feast of the Assumption 2023

Please put in your diaries that we will be keeping the feast of the Assumption this year with two important liturgies over several days in August.

There will be  celebration of Evensong and Benediction with an Assumptiontide procession of Our Lady down Oxford Street on Sunday 13th August at 6.00 pm. The preacher at Evensong will be the Rt Revd Glyn Webster.

On the feast day itself, Tuesday 15th August 2023, there will be a High Mass at 6.30 pm. The preacher will be the Vicar.

Join us for our annual procession of Our lady for the Assumption. We are so pleased that the guard of honour around the image is provided by the Chelsea Pensioners each year. We look forward to seeing them again!

The Director of Music writes:

In 2013 I embarked on what was intended to be a recording of the complete organ works of J S Bach, on the award-winning Resonus label. It now seems unlikely that I’ll finish it (it takes about 20 discs) before I draw my princely C of E pension – neither parenthood nor Covid was on the cards 10 years ago – but I do hope to add a few more discs to the series, and certainly to set down all the major works based on chorales.

The previous disc, the ‘Orgelbuchlein’, was recorded on an instrument of 1730 in Waltershausen, Thuringia, and I am very fortunate to have been granted permission to record the next (the so-called ’18’ chorales) on a magnificent 18th century instrument by Schnitger in Groningen (Netherlands).

As with all the previous recordings in the series, I shall be funding the project (hire of the instrument will cost around 3000 Euros, apart from travel expenses) substantially from my own resources; but if any Bach-loving member of the All Saints congregation felt able to offer any support, I would be inestimably grateful! If you feel able to consider this, do please contact me c/o the ASMS office.

Visit to the London Cartoon Museum
Thursday 5th October 2023 – 7.00 pm

On Thursday 5th October 2023 at 7.00 pm, there will be a parish visit to the London Cartoon Museum, just around the corner from All Saints’. There will be a brief introduction and tour of the Museum’s collection offered by a member of their staff, time to see their latest exhibition on Wallace and Gromit, and the evening will finish with a buffet supper back at the Vicarage. The cost of the evening will be £15, which includes entry to the museum, a glass of wine as we look at the exhibition, and supper at the Vicarage.

The museum is “dedicated to preserving the best of British cartoons, caricatures, comics and animation, and to establishing a museum with a gallery, archives and innovative exhibitions to make the creativity of cartoon art past and present, accessible to all for the purposes of education, research and enjoyment.”The Museum contains a fascinating collection of British caricatures and political cartoons ranging extensively from 18th Century to the present, plus an exhibition which changes once or twice a year.

This autumn’s exhibition will look at the history of Wallace and Gromit with a retrospective entitled, “30 Years of the Wrong Trousers,” which should be interesting and great fun at the same time! You can read more about it here.

In order to book a place on the Cartoon Museum visit and the buffet supper at the Vicarage, please email the parish office (office@asms.uk) and make a payment of £15 to secure your place. This can be done most easily through our parish’s PayPal account, to which Jonathan, our office administrator, will send you a link. There are 20 places in total available on this trip, which will be apportioned on a first come, first served basis.

Visit to the Fo Guang Shan Temple
Saturday 28th October – 3.00 pm

On Saturday 28th October at 3.00 pm a group from All Saints’ will visit the London Fo Guang Shan Temple on Margaret Street in order to learn more about our Buddhist neighbours’ community of faith. After our tour of the temple, our group will invite our Buddhist neighbours back to the Vicarage for tea together.

The Buddhist community moved into the building at 84 Margaret Street in 1992. Before then, it had been our parish school, and latterly in the 70s the Institute of Christian Studies run by our parish. The building is the work of William Butterfield, dating from 1868-70, about a decade or so after the consecration of All Saints’ church.

The community that now inhabits 84 Margaret Street is a branch of a Taiwanese Buddhist order which practices what is described as “humanistic Buddhism.” This is a modern expression of Buddhism which emerged in China, which seeks to place emphasis on integrating Buddhist practices into every day life, and espouses a shift away from liturgical ritual being for the dead and more for the living.

In order to book a place on the Buddhist Temple visit, please simply email our parish office. There is no charge for this event.

The Friends of All Saints’