Then and Now

 This was the old Edwardian photo of Hollesley church, one of those I found and wrote about a couple of weeks ago. 

And how it looks now, the house in the foreground is long gone, you can just see the top of the roof of the house behind which is still there and can just be seen on the old photo. All the other buildings that can be glimpsed on the old photo have also gone.

And as I pulled into the entrance way to park I realised that I HAD been here before and because I thought I hadn't I didn't even check my new checklist of A-Z churches - what an idiot woman!

A couple were doing some tidying in the churchyard, so I showed them the old photo and they were really interested to see it and hadn't seen it before although they were both local people. I left the photo with them to show others in the village. Better for it to be in the village than 30 miles away in my house.

It was almost exactly 4 years ago  that I visited Hollesley after a tour of the Woodbridge charity shops and I did the same last week and  went round all of them and found nothing, although there was a Grey Persephone book but it was £5 - more than I wanted to pay simply to add to the shelf as it wasn't one I'd want to read. I was hoping to find a Nativity scene of some sort for a friend at the Keep Moving group, who is trying to collect lots (donated or loaned) for a display as a fundraiser for her church. No luck with finding anything in Woodbridge, in fact few charity shops had Christmas stuff out yet.

I'm loaning the two I have 

But it will need dozens more to be anything like the display I visited in 2018 when there were 200 on display at Grundisburgh Church, where they were lucky to have many loaned by Libby Purves and more from their vicar at that time. They've never had another display there , the vicar moved away and Libby Purves doesn't loan out her collection - she was looking for a new home for it at the time.

So if you know anyone who has a nativity scene they don't want anymore, there's a new home for it here in Mid Suffolk!

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