Gallery of recent activities

Our recent christmas tree festival was held in the church in December 2024, with 30 trees representing village organisations, so imaginatively and beautifully decorated.  The festival was well attended and provided a beautiful backdrop to our carol service.  £700 was raised for the St. Margaret's Building Fund.

St. Margaret's held a Christmas Fayre in the Horsmonden Social Club in early December. It was a lovely four hours of music, mince pies, mulled wine, other refreshments, stalls selling home made produce and goods and some traditional games/fundraisers - tombola, guess the weight of the cake etc. around £1700 was raised. 

Remembrance Sunday is a big event in Horsmonden and provides a great opportunity for community school and church to come together.  On the Sunday there is a remembrance service held on The Green which is run jointly between St. Margaret's and the Methodists, and with the active participation of village organisations who all lay wreaths. The following Monday the school take their turn  This year Revd Andrew Axon the Area Dean took the service with the  school.

A big success story of 2024 has been the Youth Club run on Friday afternoons in term time in our church hall in the village.  Open to students from year 6 up, it has evolved into a great meeting place for children in the village who may attend many different secondary schools but can meet up at the youth club on a Friday.  With the support of YMCA also, as well as several church volunteers, we are able to offer various activities both indoor and outdoors. Recently there have been christmas card making and holly wreath making, as well as party games for Christmas.  The group made our church shared christmas card.

In August 2024 we hosted the touring theatre company THIS IS MY THEATRE at St. Margaret's, who performed a highly entertaining Midsummer Night's Dream to a packed audience.  this was the second time they performed at St. Margaret's. having done Much Ado About Nothing the year before.  We are very much looking to their next visit in June 2025!

In June 2024 two St. Margaret's congregation members organised a garden safari as a fundraiser for the St. Margaret's Building Appeal Fund. 9 kind village households opened their gardens, a whole host of others acted as stewards, baked cakes, served refreshments, the result being a really fantastic day for the village and an amazing fundraising total of £3,515 for the Building Appeal fund.

On June 1st 2024 St Margaret's held a special day at the church in collaboration with the Horsmonden Nostalgia Group to commemorate D Day.  There was a display of photos and memorabilia from people (or their relatives) who lived through it, and there was a special church service  which led us through WW2 with direct reference to Horsmonden. A key feature of the service was the blessing of stained glass that was blown out of the church in 1944 when a V1 flying bomb (or doodlebug) had landed on the northeast side of the churchyard, destroying all the windows on that side of the church. This glass was saved by the father of congregation member Angie, stored carefully, wrapped in paper in a box in the church and only discovered a couple of years ago.  Angie's husband Steve created a beautiful wooden frame for the fragments, with echoes of the original window. The full story was featured on the Diocese website here:

Unexpected find brings D Day commemorations to life in Horsmonden - Diocese of Rochester

In April 2024 we had an opportunity to bless the recent improvements to the St Margaret's Garden of Remembrance, the ashes area in our churchyard. This was an initiative contrbuted to by St. Margaret's fundraising but was also a key project for fundraising by the Social Club in the village. We also used it as an opportunity to also hold our yearly Time to Remember service which gives the community a special service with readings, hymns and quiet time to remember their loved ones who have died. 

Our yearly Good Friday Service on The Green in Horsmonden is a joint service between the Methodists and St. Margaret's, and in 2024 the Bishop was also in attendance. Members of our congregation place three large wooden crosses on The Green each year, and there is a solemn service to rememberwhat happened on Good Friday.

Members of St. Margaret's congregation regularly go into the primary school at Horsmonden for Open the Book sessions when they bring bible stories to life.  The photos below were taken during 2024 visits.

During the summer term of 2024, St Margaret's hosted a special visit to the church by year 6 students at the primary school, where the children spent a fun few hours exploring the church via specially designed activities inside and outside.