Churches February 2025

PCC Meeting

The next meeting of the PCC is to be confirmed.

St Helen's Contact Details

During the Interregnum the Area Dean will be responsible for the Parish.

Rev. Chris Groocock  01670 813358      www.achurchnearyou.com

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Other Sunday services by arrangement, information thereof being available from our Contact below.

For our other group meetings, please see the Group Activities sections.

Visitors are always very welcome to all our events.

Contact Ian Pagan 788263 idpagan@btinternet.com

Website: www.longhorsleymission.org.uk

Thought for the Month

Just over 300 years ago Thomas Sharp wrote to his older brother asking for his permission to marry Judith Wheeler. He explains that she will make ‘the most useful and agreeable Wife of any Lady that I have yet heard of’ – a true love match. They brought up eight surviving children in the old pele tower in Whitton, the rectory for the parish church in Rothbury. In later years it is said that the family became known as the ‘Good Sharps’. How did they come to earn this title?

Locally the best known of the children was John Sharp, who became the Vicar of Hartburn and Archdeacon of Northumberland, but who is best remembered for his work as a Trustee of the Lord Crewe Bequest. Crewe, the Prince Bishop of Durham, had left money for ‘charitable purposes’ from his estates in Durham and Northumberland. There was a surplus income and John decided this should be spent for the benefit of Crewe’s lands and the people of Bamburgh. 

He started repairs on the castle, provided free medicines (the first rural dispensary in the country), cheap food (the windmill he planned can still be seen at the north end of the castle) and provided the first self-righting lifeboat in the country. 

He arranged for guns to be fired to warn ships of the dangerous shoreline, and for shelter and clothing to be available for shipwrecked mariners. A large memorial to his work can be seen in the parish church in Bamburgh.  His contribution was such that after his death these initiatives were not maintained as they had been in his lifetime.

When Jesus tells his followers to love one another, this includes care for the poor and distressed, as shown by John. Even more remarkable is how the brothers and sisters in the family worked together for mutual benefit.  Brother William went to London and became a top surgeon and gave advice on the setting up of the dispensary. 

Brother James was an engineer and sent advice on the building of the windmill. 

The book of James in the Bible says (3:13) ‘Who are wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.’ John Sharp was wise in this sense. His younger brother Granville had even more battles to fight, as I hope to explain another day.

Martin Light, Longhorsley Mission.

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