Leighton Bromswold

Leighton Bromswold is a small positive parish keen to be welcoming to any who attend church services. There are a wide range of services held monthly including cafe church, family services, Easter morning service with breakfast, Christmas Eve carol celebration as well as the more formal Communion services. We welcome families and children and have a play area at the back. We hope to make our services warm, friendly, accessible, engaging and spiritually enlightening thus engage new and younger congregants and serve regular attenders.

 

 

There is a monthly men’s prayer breakfast and a weekly home group which give expression to faith and aims to build community and discipleship.

During the year there are also fund-raising concerts, games nights, a charity breakfast, a harvest supper and afternoon teas.

 

 

St Mary’s Leighton Bromswold was built in 1248 and most famously was rebuilt by George Herbert. Its two pulpits reflect the need to pray as well as preach and is a feature that helped the church gain entry to Simon Jenkins’ book, “England’s 1,000 best churches”. The church benefits from a number of visitors and we try to make people welcome, organising tours of the church, providing information and often food. The annual Little Gidding Pilgrimage, presided over recently by former Archbishop Most Rev Rowan Williams, is a well-loved event. There is a board highlighting the role of George Herbert and we hope to provide inspiration to those visiting in recognition of his spiritualty and poetic talent.

 The Grade One building is well cared for and we have recently installed a completely new roof. However, we are keen to develop the church further and are progressing with a re-ordering to include a toilet and ultimately aim to make the church more versatile and warmer.  Our hope is to make the building inviting enough to be useable as a community space and ideally to be able to draw more in for social and spiritual activities.  There is a Friends of St Marys group to help with building maintenance, cleaning and events.

Some residents commute to Cambridge and London, while others work locally. Leighton Bromswold has a fantastic community spirit with a full calendar of social events, which brings the villagers together regularly.  Older folks are cared for and people genuinely look out for each other.