Church post for Maundy Thursday.

Yesterday it snowed. D-d and I drove to Peel, about 11 miles, for her dental appointment, in a howling gale and snow! But today it was calmer and sunnier. So I took advantage of having the day off work, and the nicer weather, to visit another of our island parish churches/graveyards.

This time it was the Parish church at Santon, St Sanctan's. Each time I do one of these posts I think of the beautiful English parish churches that keswindhover posts pictures of - and realise that ours are very, very different...

This one is particularly suitable for Maundy Thursday as the stained glass window (yes - in the singular) shows the Last Supper. (With a very spiffy bit of carpet...!)

Although there has been a keeil on the site since about 500AD, the current church was built in 1774, and is just a typical Manx parish church with its plain rectangular shape, whitewashed walls and wooden beamed roof.

So - under the cut are pictures of the inside and outside of the church, a few interesting grave stones, and a couple of wild-flower pictures - and a close-up of the window with the spiffy carpet -

( St. Sanctan's )

I have been to church this evening for the quiet, solemn, Tenebrae service - a series of readings and silence, which starts with nine lit candles, one of which is extinguished with each reading, followed by an equally quiet communion service and the re-lighting of the Christ candle.

I'm afraid that I was very distracted to start with by the first reader somehow managing to read totally the wrong thing! You'd have thought it might have occurred to him that he'd written it down wrongly when he realised he seemed to have the passage where Jesus walks on the water when the first reading should be of the last supper...