Foreword

My young and expanding family and I were lucky enough to live at Waterden Farmhouse for nearly a decade from December 1998. Back then, as now, All Saints’ Church only had one service a month during the summer (the church has no electricity) and its ever-popular Christmas Eve candlelit service, with some worshippers crammed into the old box pews and the rest squeezed into the rear of the church.

We never drove to church and the walk became, for us, part of the ritual. All three of my daughters have been christened in the beautiful, simple font. I was lucky enough to buy a hauntingly calm painting of the font by contemporary artist Gerard Stamp.

What do I love more than anything in this church apart from its intimacy and tranquility? It has to be the painted inscription board above the junction of the nave and the chancel: “Lo, I am with you alway”.

The Earl of Leicester, August 2019