More extra miles being walked by our demolishers - well not ours exactly - as they delivered all the plaques that had once graced the chapel walls to my driveway to await transfer to our graveyard where they will form some sort of lasting memorial to, er, the building! The sale contract requires them to salvage and return to us four inscribed foundation stones from the front of the building (which will come down quite soon now) but we had accepted that the plaques would have to go with the building.
So now my drive looks like the yard at the undertakers - littered with monumental stonemasonry - and reversing onto it is 'interesting' as fit my Saxo into a smaller space than usual avoiding damage to the plaques and protecting them from vandals and thieves.
Just in case burglar Bill passed by I have photographed them all, and the one below recalls the first ever minister of this church... from Orton to Gorton in two centuries!
Some how I can't see a plaque to my memory ever being erected in a church - for which I am extremely grateful - nor will I serve a congregation for 50 or more years as this chap evidently did!
PS If the image makes you wonder about the manse wall maybe I should point out that the plaque is on its end so the photo has been rotated (hence the rather strange perspective effect) - Dibley may have its quirks but building houses by laying bricks on their ends isn't one of them!
Comments
Fascinated by this plaque - but my failing eyesight cannot work it all out. He was an energetic, impressive and eminently useful minister of ...what...?
Our place, having been rebuilt after Hitler destroyed it, is totally beset by memorials, because everybody wanteds to donate some part of the new sanctuary in memory of some dear deceased person. Worship at KMFC and see more plaque on a Sunday than the average dentist sees in a lifetime!!
Hi Angela it says...
He was an exemplary and devoted Christian; a diligent and successful student, and an energetic, impressive and eminently useful minister of the glorious gospel.
So there you have it! He lived roughly 1768 to 1845 - the wording is slightly ambiguous
He lived ROUGHLY ? Wasn't the Manse in a very good state then?!
But what a fabulous epitaph - richly deserved after fifty years in one pastorate, I guess.
D+6 have a framed set of photos of their first dozen or so ministers, each with an appropriate scriptural epithet. One of them is ascribed the text: 'Though being dead, yet he speaketh'.
You can't keep a good man down!