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This is a text-only version of an article first published on Thursday, 22 December 2016. Information shown on this page may no longer be current.
ON successive nights this month, St Peter and St Paul's in Wantage flung wide its doors to show that the Church knows how to celebrate Christmas. First was the Dickensian Evening, a well-established Wantage-wide celebration, with dozens of activities in the Market Square and surrounds.
The choir sang carols alongside the renowned Wantage Silver Band and the church itself saw huge footfall.
Stalls and the mulled wine bar did great business, raising more than £2,000 for operating funds, to help maintain the church at the heart of this rapidly growing community. The next night was the Wantage Wassail.
This is the parish's Christmas feast, complete with Santa's grotto in the Fitzwarryn chapel, a disco under the 13th-century tower and lashings of home-made entertainment (this year a Ten Lords-a-Leaping game involved bishops' faces pasted to balloons).
The Wassail helps to fund music in the Parish, where a choral trust pays the organist' salary and RSCM training for trebles.
It raised almost £900.
Wantage Dickensian Evening 2016.
Wantage Wassail 2016.