St Ninian's Church, Whitby

04/03/2024

Doing some more clearing out today and came across this picture shoved away out of sight.

It's a bit blurred as it is framed, but does anyone know which of the ladies is which?

A handwritten list was sellotaped to the back of the frame.

03/12/2023

The St Ninian's elves have been very busy today. For the first time in a long time, the famous St Ninian's Christmas Crib is back in its rightful place for the Nativity.

21/11/2023

EDIT: Due to the current conditions and uncertainty, this workshop has been cancelled. There may be an opportunity to rearrange.

Upcoming event to be held at St Ninian's. Learn how to make a lovely Christmas Wreath.

06/11/2023

Here is the new St Ninian's War Memorial scroll.

Previously, it was stuck at the back of the church, on a dark wall, and you had to walk along the back gated pew to get near to it. It was also riddled with woodworm and the frame disintegrated when taken off the wall - and the little beggars had also started to eat the paper!

Scanned and digitally repaired with a little photo-shop type program, and put into a new worm-free frame. It remembers the members of the congregation who went to war, including the 8 who didn't come home. A Memorial Book is being written, so I will hopefully have that done for the 8 lost men by next Saturday. The others will be added as soon as possible.

The original was drawn by Edward Courtenay-Shephard who was a Proprietor of the chapel around the time of WWI. It is now going to be preserved and kept safe.

03/11/2023

Last week two lovely ladies came to the church to leave some bright pink Gerbera flowers in memory of their friend, Jofi.

After laying on the bible for the rest of the day, I thought it better that they went to live in a vase with some water.

11/09/2023

Somebody asked if there was another way of donating, and I explained that there had been a GoFundMe page but I had closed it down a while ago. On the off chance that anyone would like to donate this way, I've reactivated it.

Donations by cheque: make payable to "The Proprietors and Friends of… Margaret Hirst needs your support for St Ninian's Proprietary Chapel Restoration Appeal

05/09/2023

**Original Deeds, Documents, Record Books.**

After months of thinking that they might be lost forever, but also thinking that things have seemed to come to light as and when the time was right (in a very spooky way) the "lost" original records for St Ninian's have been found. I still have a big lump in my throat today just writing about it.

My two colleagues, Val Appleton and Jenny Burns, have spent the last couple of months heroically sorting through the piles and boxes of "stuff" which had been left/dumped in the gallery of the church. Everything has been meticulously sorted into various categories - keep / to be checked by someone else / dump etc. Yesterday, they finally got round to the furthest pews and found boxes of the original documents shoved deep underneath.

I can't even begin to describe the importance of finding these records. They may not be valuable in monetary terms, but as irreplaceable historic documents they are priceless.

In about 1985, decorating was being undertaken at the church and they found a cupboard with its doors to the wall. They moved it out to paint behind and found that it was stuffed to the gills with paperwork. Just about every piece of paper relating to the church from when they started the whole project in 1776.

Evidently the first thought was to bin them as they were of no use!!! But in one of those incredibly lucky coincidences the renowned local historian, Ros Barker, was involved. She took charge of them. They were taken down to Whitby Museum and there they have stayed. Of course, there were other records that were still in use, so they remained in the church, and the original Indentures/Deeds for the land etc were deposited with a local solicitor.

Ros had catalogued the entire collection, so it was obvious when I came to research things at the end of last year what was missing. And now they are back.

Having seen some old photocopies she made, I know that some of the vellum Deeds go back well into the 1600s. There are about 2 dozen of them and they have an aroma all of their own.

Proper storage for conservation is going to be the order of the day. It would be lovely to get them opened up and scanned to be able to display a replica, and luckily vellum does lend itself to lasting well. Add to that, any ink loss due to water damage from the flood in the solicitor's basement can be over-ridden by use of UV (or other light) where blank documents just bounce back to life.

I would be a happy bunny about this, but I am still in shock.

18/08/2023

**EDIT: The buckets, carefully laid out by me yesterday "just in case" were all dry this morning after Storm Betty. I positively skipped along the gallery floor. Like finding your child with a dry nappy in the morning for the first time ever - sort of.

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So, we have been open to the public for 4 weeks, and people have been very generous with their donations. What has been done with the money?

Firstly, there was the new sign. OK, we could have probably done without one, but a new one was needed to show that St Ninian's is back where it should be. It has always been a church at the heart of Whitby, ever since it was built as the Chapel of Ease for St Mary's.

Secondly, unseen by most people, there has been an army of black buckets situated around the gallery catching the water leaking through the roof. Occasionally, it has overflowed and come down onto the pews and floor. So this week, the big boys came in with a cherry picker and cleaned out the gutters. And boy! did they need doing. Here are some before and after pictures.

Amazing how the leaks matched up with where the big clumps of grass etc were. Well, hopefully anyway. We shall see better when it rains - I've left the buckets out just in case.

Thanks to Gutters and Grounds for their work. Good professional blokes and I would recommend them for anyone needing some high-level work like this done.

08/08/2023

08/08/2023

With so many thanks to Chris at Jet Print, Whitby, for the wonderful design work - quite took my breath away the first time I saw it - and to Tony for patiently fitting it today.

This sign more or less duplicates an older sign from many years ago, and takes St Ninian's back into its roots as the Proprietary Chapel of Ease for St Mary's.

(And yes, the doors do look different. One has been cleaned with Will Kirk's special mixture (The Repair Shop), and the other one will get the same treatment later this week.)

29/07/2023

So many lovely people visited today. Thank you. And such generosity from one particular person.

28/07/2023

Open Saturday 29 July, c10am to c3.30pm. (Opening time depends on when I get back from a couple of runs to the tip! The years of accumulated rubbish is gradually clearing.)

Still awaiting a card reader for donations. If you want to help to support this unique building, please bring some cash!