Celebrations for 800th anniversary of St Mary's Hook to be held in May. Vicar Philip Ball will be living as a hermit for the medieval re-enactment weekend.
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00:00Hello, I'm Philip Ball, the vicar of St Mary's in Hooke. We always say Hooke is the, well, Ghoul is the suburb of Hooke because Hooke is the old medieval village, been here since at least the 11th century, maybe earlier we think Saxon times.
00:17And Hooke's only been there almost 200 years and the church here was put up in 1225, started 1224, finished 1225, so this year is our 800th anniversary.
00:29So you've got to celebrate, haven't you? Not often you get a chance to have an 800th birthday and we're trying to do that.
00:36Thank God, thank all the people who've been involved, celebrate as much as we can the different aspects of the history of the church in different things that are happening throughout the year.
00:46But one of our main things is to have a medieval enactment weekend which captures the period or evokes the period when the church was built.
00:57So part of the 800th anniversary is to try and set the church up for another 100 years and we're doing renovations in many ways taking the church back to what it was in medieval times
01:09and in earlier times where it was a community building used by the community and used for worship as well.
01:18And so we're putting a disabled toilet, a kitchenette in and other things that enable the place to be used flexibly and well for the community and the church into the long term future
01:30which gives us the possibility of sustaining and keeping the place usable, it matches to the way that the church would have been used in the past
01:39and gives a way of enabling us to bring in the funds and a way of keeping the church here to the future.
01:48We have a good first stage is the work inside, the next stage is to replace the roof which as you can see is concrete tiles rather than slate.
01:58The architect did suggest that we should go back to the original roofing and I said, well it was probably reed around here then, wasn't it?
02:05So we'll go for thatch and then we decided maybe thatch was going to be a total disaster.
02:09So we're going to have slate and that should set it up for at least 150 years worth of use.
02:16If it's all done properly, there shouldn't be huge expenses for a long time which will enable the church to be here
02:22and to serve this community and to serve more widely the people of this area.
02:26We've had an immense amount of local volunteers and local help in various ways
02:32and one that's happening today is that the Howdenshire Archaeological Society are surveying the gravestones
02:39to create some information on the internet, to create some information and displays about the heritage and history of the people
02:48who are recorded on those gravestones and where those gravestones are which will be useful in various ways
02:54and it's brilliant to have so many volunteers, so many people who find the place interesting
03:00even if they don't come to church on the Sunday
03:01and there are many of those around about and who've done immense things in raising money
03:07and enabling us to get this project done because without all that fundraising
03:11we would really never have got to the stage we are now of actually, I think, protecting the church for the future.
03:18The church, when it was put up in medieval times, there was a hermitage nearby
03:24which we're not quite sure whether it was there before the church or around the beginning of the church
03:30but there certainly was a hermitage, a medieval hermitage
03:33and I've promised to live as a medieval hermit for the weekend when we're doing medieval reenactment
03:40and so at the moment, of course, I'm in sackcloth because it's Lent and it's a period of penance
03:46and I will probably wear slightly different things but I'm wearing medieval clothing to look medieval
03:53but I decided I'd have a shower this morning so I don't smell medieval in quite the way that we might
04:00there is a good suggestion that none of us will spend a long time becoming horribly and smelly for the weekend
04:07and thank you so much
04:12I will have to get that bomb
04:15and get this valentgly and keep moving to the striking
04:17without a hearing!
04:18I can say it earlier
04:19with a box in England
04:21I can say it in the wrong place
04:24I can say it in the wrong place
04:27so let's double out
04:31I can say it in the wrong place
04:34and you can remove the calf
04:35so let's get out