St. Anne's Church Centre |
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Load Street, Bewdley, Worcestershire. Tel: 01299 405385 |
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St Anne’s Church Centre is open and fully staffed by volunteers till 4pm every day except Monday. People drop in and enjoy a cup of tea or coffee while they chat or simply rest their aching feet. Thousands of visitors to Bewdley sign the visitors’ Book every year, commenting on the warm welcome they receive, and on the sense of peace they find in the building, despite its being a traffic-island! Besides the tourists, there are also many residents of Bewdley who drop in on a regular basis, usually after doing their shopping or as part of their weekly routine. Great Bewdley characters like Jim Reynolds and Cyril Garbett became very familiar faces here.
Housed within the St Anne’s Church Centre there is a thriving TRAIDCRAFT outlet. TRAID-CRAFT sells fairly-traded tea and coffee as well as hundreds of different items manufactured in the Third World in co-operatives and other work-systems that guarantee the workers a fair share of the profits. The quality of design and manufacture is very high which ensures satisfied customers keep on returning with fresh orders. The outlet had a turnover in excess of £20,000 in 1997, which gives some idea of the volume of customers that purchase TRAIDCRAFT goods from the Centre.
A Photocopier (5p a run), A digital scan printer (2p a run) A Computer (£1 an hour) Also housed within the St Anne’s Church Centre is the BEWDLEY RESOURCE CENTRE. The Hereford & Worcester County Council established during the 1990s a network of over 20 ‘Resource Centres’ which they kitted out with photocopiers, printing machines and computers, so that people in rural areas would have access to such equipment for the use of their community’s voluntary organisations, charities, and start-up businesses. Bewdley Resource Centre is the only one in the country to be housed in a church, which is the reason for yet another procession of people to use the building, for the Resource Equipment gets a lot of use.
When the interior of the building was being radically restored over the past 15 years, the town’s need for a large performance space was borne in mind. The floor level of the chancel was raised to create a ‘stage’, and the space kept uncluttered - the new altar and other furniture being made deliberately mobile. The Chancel Arch makes for a natural proscenium, and the integral sound-reinforcement system (complete with Hearing Loop) means that performers can be seen and heard by an audience of 200 or more. Singers love the acoustic, which is why the Bewdley Choral Society have made it their home, giving two concerts a year. We have also welcomed in recent years such performers as Brian Blessed; Roger McGough; travelling opera companies; the Kidderminster Male Choir; the choir of Worcester Cathedral; Black Voices; Springs Dance Company; as well as a series of full-scale religious musicals performed by local people. In addition there have been celebrity lectures, summer exhibitions of photographs, paintings and sculpture, and an annual Flower Festival over Carnival weekend. Furthermore, to support local amateur and semi-professional performers, and occasionally professionals, every month there is a Saturday Lunchtime Recital at 12 noon, free with a retiring collection.
There is Family Communion at 9.30 every Sunday morning, midweek Communion on Wednesdays at 10.15am and a prayer breakfast at 8.15 on Saturday mornings. Although there is a glass partition between the Narthex and the Nave, there is in practice no ‘Church’ that is separate from the ‘Centre’. This is one building, one collection of spaces, one church centre. I pay tribute to the congregation who have had the vision, the courage and the generosity to create |
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