The death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth

The death of Her Majesty was met with great sadness in the parish but was not totally unexpected. We arranged to hoist the flag of St. George at half mast and opened the church of St. Mary , normally closed for security reasons, initially for private prayer for an hour but the number of people coming to either pray or just sit quietly in church persuaded us to keep church open for 4 hours. We also arranged for the tenor bell to be tolled for an hour and our organist and verger, also an organist, played solemn music intermittently throughout that time.
We felt that in doing this we were showing love, respect and thanks to our beloved sovereign and also provided our villagers, some who were not church goers, with a facility to express their grief.