Times of Masses at St Thomas More
We celebrate Mass at St Thomas More each Sunday at 8:45am. All are welcome.
On the first Sunday of each month, Mass is focused especially on the children - asking children to do the readings, for example - and the homily is designed mainly for the children.
Confession is available 5.30pm to 5.50pm on Saturdays (at St Swithun's) or by appointment at other times.
The Catholic Community in Hartley Wintney
If you walk up
from the cricket field into Mount Pleasant, just tucked into Mildmay
Terrace, you will see the Catholic Church of St. Thomas More where
Catholics from Hartley Wintney and neighbouring villages have
celebrated Holy Mass for more than forty years. Through the oak gates
beautifully carved by David Sexton, you will enter an oasis of calm.
The building looks rather plain from the outside. Inside you are welcomed by a colourful mural created in 1961 by Prue Theobalds which depicts our patron, St. Thomas More. (Prue's family were parishioners in Fleet at the time. She is now highly regarded as one of Britain's most distinguished illustrators of children's books, particularly of teddy bears, her great love.) A large crucifix, given by the Heys family, hangs over the inside door.
Fourteen
beautiful ceramic plaques, by EO Hevezi, in memory of Anne Marguerita
Godsland, show the Way of the Cross. High up behind the altar you will
see two wooden statues (one of Our Lady, the other St. Thomas More)
carved by Dom Vincent from Farnborough
Abbey and standing on shelves created by the late Mick
Fitzgerald. Hassocks, painstakingly created in cross-stitch by the
late Margaret Elliot, display doves of peace. All of these, like the
gates, were gifts from members of the congregation over the years. Two
beautiful brass candlesticks, given by the Parish
Council to commemorate the Millennium, grace our altar.
We
didn't always have such a fine Church building and we have never had a
resident priest. In the 1940s we met in each other's houses for Mass.
We were served then by Father John Law, chaplain to the convent
preparatory school at Yateley Hall and in the 1950s by Father (now
Canon) Terry Walsh, the priest from the Church of Our Lady in Fleet.
During the 1950s our congregation of around 25 people used to meet for
Mass in the Vicarage Hut next to St. John's Vicarage. It is to these
people and others that we owe our Church building now. Local families
such as the Hartnetts, the Morgans, the Whites and the Allens all
contributed the princely sum of £2 per family per week to build the
Church - quite a commitment in those days! They also organised and
supported fundraising activities including fêtes and coffee mornings.
The land was given to the Portsmouth Diocese by the late Brigadier Sir Richard Hamilton Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe in 1955. Permission was given for an electricity supply in 1960 and the Church was built by Mr Anscombe in 1961 for £8,000, dedicated on the feast of St. Thomas More.
The first wedding ever to take place in the church was that of Phyllida Cooper to Noel Jelf on the 2nd January 1965. Fr Terry Walsh said their nuptial mass. Sadly Phyllida died in April 1996 aged 65. The second wedding ceremony to be conducted in the Church was that of local girl Heather Vaughan who married Michael Tierney in 1965. They remember clearly the need to borrow a piano, pushed up the hill from Longfield Cottage! The first baptism at Mass was Suzannah Beazley in 1972 and the family provided the Baptismal bowl.
Some of the original families still worship at our little Church today and we now number around 60 in our congregation. Through the 1970s and up to early 2007 we were lovingly served by Father Norman Swinton (now deceased), Father Eddie Richer, Father Vincent Convery, Father Chris Rutledge and Father Danny Burns, with support at times from the priests of the Salesian College in Farnborough. Today we are a part of the Catholic Community of North East Hampshire. First served by Canon David Mahy, then by Father Simon Thomson, and now by Father Wojciech Paszko, we celebrate Mass every Sunday and Thursday morning. We are grateful to the Grey House School where we are allowed to park our cars.
The style of our Church building allows us to use it for social gatherings such as our annual Parish Lunch in the summer, which superseded the Mardi Gras supper held for many years. The pews are moved aside and tables and chairs borrowed from the Methodist Church are arranged with bright covers and flowers ready for the Parish family get-together.
We have always had an ecumenical involvement, from our times in the Vicarage Hut up to the present day. We were founder members of Churches Together in Hartley Wintney and, in turn, our little Church is used for ecumenical services during Lent and Advent as well as Harvest Festival, Christian Aid, Women's World Day of Prayer and Christian Unity.
Its size makes our Church an ideal place to visit for a still quietness to pray. We have held Peace services there and, whilst custodians of the Churches Together Unity Cross, we opened our Church for the village response to the events of September 11 in New York.
Each year we collect donations to help others outside of our Parish family. Examples over the years include Christmas presents for needy children in neighbouring counties, financial support for poorer parishes in North Wales and in India, blankets for Eastern Europe and cans of food sent to the poor in Guyana. Notelets illustrated by a sketch of the church drawn by the late Bert Rockhill were for sold for that worthy cause.
Every
two years, when the villagers from St. Savin visit, they join us for
Mass. Fond memories of the late David Ely are shared then. The St.
Savin visitors presented us with a plaque in David's memory soon after
he died. An altar bell brought back by David from the parish in India
is still in use today.
Our Parish Family is the living Church - not the building - and we are a village community where you will find a warm, friendly welcome. Just take a stroll up Mount Pleasant on the first Sunday morning of any month and join us for coffee after Mass.
Adapted from an article that appeared in Contact Magazine, September 2002.