Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2008 | Page 46

life

FEATURE

The Church in the field
By June Elford

The first thing that strikes you about St.
Agnes’ Church is the thatched roof. In
fact, it’s unique as it was probably the first
building on the Isle of Wight in 1808 to be
thatched with reed instead of straw.
The little church was bui lt on land
donated by Hallam, son of Alfred Lord
Tennyson, the Victorian Poet Laureate
and the original thatch of Norfolk reed
was replaced in 1962 and again in 1979
by the Woodford family, thatchers on the
Isle of Wight for four generations. But
in 2007 it was decided that its famous
thatched roof needed restoring and a
Centenary Year Appeal was launched.
Most of the £40,000 needed to repair and
re-thatch the roof has been raised, thanks
to the efforts of the Appeal Committee
and members of the congregation. Scilla
Rolison, chairman of the committee,
explained, “It started with a ‘coffee

46

morning and stay to lunch’ in May 2007,
then we had afternoon teas, a ‘good as
new’ clothes sale and people opening their
gardens. A member of the congregation
made and donated a rocking horse for a
raffle and we had the Flower Festival in
the church. It was hard work but it was
meant to happen.” Another idea was to
ask people to sponsor a bundle of new
thatch for ten pounds with the donors’
names entered in a commemorative book.
Last summer master thatchers, Darcy
Muncer and Michael Roberts, worked on
the quaintly gabled roof, the windows and
the little bell-cote using 3,000 bundles of
Hungarian reed (a length of reed is 6 feet
long), 10,000 hazel spars and 120 bundles
of straw. “It took us ten weeks and we had
120 blisters to show for it”, Darcy told
me.
On August 10th this year St. Agnes’

Church celebrated its centenary with a
thanksgiving service. The church was
decorated with masses of flowers and
the congregation included the Lord
Lieutenant, Major General Martin White,
the High Sheriff, Alan Titchmarsh,
Andrew Turner MP, and Myrtle Vanner
who first came to the church 86 years ago
when she was three-years-old.
Eryl Vennings, the chairman of the
West Wight Floral Art Society told me
about the background to the ‘Centennial
Celebrations’ Flower Festival, how she
found a note from Ann Dodgson on an
old envelope to the then chairman saying,
“May we book you please, for a Flower
Festival in 2008 for the weekend nearest
12th August when St. Agnes celebrates 100
years. (I shall be pushing the daisies up or
firing the devil’s fire!).”
So the Society carried out Ann’s wishes

www.wightfrog.com/islandlife