Gastard Events

2025 Event Programme

Please send updates to our programme OR your event reports to Webmaster@GastardChurch.org.uk

On this page: Gastard Open Church ** Gastard 2025 Events ** Gastard Past Events ** Other Gastard Pages

Gastard Open Church

Church Open Daily in summer

Church Open – every day from 10am to 4pm from Monday 1st April to the end of September to:

  • Swap (or just take!) a book – Book Swap
  • Leave or take any fresh garden produce – Produce Swap
  • Drop off Food Bank donations – Food Bank Donations
  • Drop off Pill blister packs for recycling – Blister Pack Recycling
  • Read our Community noticeboard – Community Information Centre
  • Read our ‘About Us’ & ‘Visitors’ boards or just look around – Visitor Attraction
  • Spend some time for personal reflection or prayer in this beautiful quiet space – Spiritual Refuge
  • Stay cool in the summer with a book or your friends – Cool Hub

Garden Open Daily

Garden Open – every day!

  • Please feel free to walk around the grounds.
  • Have a picnic.
  • Bring your children to run around whilst you rest on our bench commemorating Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee and her death.
Our bench for our visitors to rest.

Pill blister pack recycling

Pill Blister Pack Drop-off – Gastard Eco church is pleased to offer a recycling opportunity for pill blister packs that are hard to recycle as neither Wiltshire Council nor the Corsham Recycling Hub is offering this service. Simply drop off your pill blister packs in the container within church when open. Note: the church is closed during the day in winter except for services. Additionally, you can drop off at the village hall during the Wednesday Warm Hub/ Tea & Chatter sessions. Most people who go to the church or the Village Hall session would be happy to receive them if you can’t go directly yourself.
HOWEVER, providing this facility is quite costly and we kindly ask for a donation to the church, if you can. The suggested donation is £5 for 100 blister packs, or £10 for a year’s access PER PERSON. For options & details on how to make a donation, there are instructions at the collection point or contact Treasurer@GastardChurch.org.uk.

Food Bank

Food Bank – As an active member of the Corsham Churches Food Bank, we operate a collection point for donations – please leave your donation of dried, packet or tinned food in the marked box, inside, whenever the church is open. More details of needs.

Gastard Events for 2025

Monthly Litter Picks

Monthly Litter Pick by Gastard Eco Team

We meet on most months (occasionally we cancel an event in inclement weather). A happy bunch of volunteers meet on the 1st (usually) Saturday of each month starting at 10am from the church where they get a bag with holder, picker, hi-viz jacket and a litter pick route. We keep the streets and verges of our community looking clean whilst engaging in interesting chatter with your picking partner. It is a therapeutic and rewarding task.

Contact Jill B for more information: LitterPickingLead@GastardChurch.org.uk.

VE80 Gastard History exhibition and Poppies Display – Saturday 10th May 2025 onwards – church open every day 10am – 4pm

Tea in the Garden then Patronal Festival Sunday 22nd June 2025.
our Patronal Festival celebrating St John The Baptist
5.00pm Afternoon Tea in the church garden – all welcome – come and join us
6pm Evensong Service

Summer Lunch – Provisional date Sunday 20th July 2025, 12pm, venue to be confirmed
Buffet Lunch and Desserts – Bring your own Drinks and Glasses – Raffle
£12 per person, £5 children, pre-school FOC
Tickets in advance from Sandy Fletcher  01249 715006
watch out for posters, or on Gastard Shoutout, for further information.

FairTrade Sunday – 7th September 2025 (TBC) – We celebrate the Fairtrade movement. Of course, Fairtrade tea or coffee will be served (as usual).

Ride & Stride – Saturday 13th September 2025 – every year, Wiltshire Historic Churches Trust organise a county-wide event for sponsored people to walk, cycle or ride between churches to raise money for the Trust. The Trust give grants to churches that need expensive repairs, but also give back half the money raised by our sponsors to St John’s.

Climate Sunday & Charity Appeal Service for Gastard’s 2025 Eco Charity – Sunday 14th September 2025 – Each year our church chooses a new charity supporting an ecological development project in prayer & and a charity to financially support. In 2021 we raised a huge amount (£2,000) in aid of the International Tree Foundation for the Watu Wa Miti project in Kenya helping sustainable forestry and helping in the global battle against Climate Change. In 2022 we funded the drilling of a well for the Kenyan village of Cheputue and raised over £1,500 to fully fund a new well, now in operation. In 2024 we supported an NGO called The Nasio Trust – a UK registered charity and Kenyan NGO which supports orphaned and vulnerable children and empowers communities in Kakamega County, Kenya to break the cycle of poverty and thrive, by focusing on three key strands: Education, Healthcare and Sustainable Livelihoods.
This year (2025) we are supporting the National Trust “Adopt-a-Plot” Peat Bogs restoration project.

Harvest Praise & Supper – 6pm Sunday 28th September 2025 – Usually a well-attended Harvest Praise service in the church where you can donate food – destined for the Corsham Churches Food Bank. A Harvest Supper will be held to acknowledge the food grown on the land that sustains us at 7pm in the Village Hall. tickets £10. Contact Sandy Fletcher if you wish to attend.

All Saints/ All Souls Service – 10am Sunday 2nd November- names from our Book of Remembrance and others who have passed away will be read out.

Remembrance Sunday – 10:30am Sunday 9th November – in remembrance of those fallen as a result of armed conflicts, with a two minute silence at 11am.

Carol Service – 6pm Sunday 14th December (TBC) – 9 lessons and carols by candle light.

Crib Service – 4pm Wednesday 24th December at Boyds Farm. The Nativity story will be retold with props and popular carols sung. A hugely popular event for families and children, following those held in 2021, 2022 & 2023. Details to be determined …

Midnight Mass – Wednesday 24th December (TBC). Time to be determined.

Leave a Legacy to the Church, Service – date tbc – a refresh of our legacy scheme so that supporters of our village church can provide something for St John’s church in their will, helping us to maintain a beacon of Christian light within our community.

Past Gastard Events

2025 Past Events

Village Quiz & Cheese Supper – Saturday 22nd February 2025. The St John’s Village Quiz (with a light Ploughman’s Supper) was held in the Village Hall. Another sell-out, raising over £550 for church funds through ticket sales and raffle tickets. Thanks to the organiser Jill Kent and here many helpers. thanks also to the many who donated raffle prizes.

Mothering Sunday – Sunday 30th March 2025 – Beautiful posies of Spring flowers were given out to each attendee. Some were taken to those unable to attend. Surplus posies were hung from the railings for passing mothers to take home. The service reminds us of the origins of Mothering Sunday – a calling to attend ones mother church -and is a fitting gratitude for mothers the world over as we share the enduring qualities that mothers have.

Walk of Witness –  Good Friday April 18th 2025. Organised and led by the Corsham Area Christian Churches –  we met by the stone cross in the garden opposite the Co-op in Corsham at 10.30am  – with singing of  hymns and the telling of the Easter story, using readings from Luke’s Gospel, as we processed around the town centre with the wooden cross.

Easter Sunday – April 20th 2025 – we celebrated this major date in the Christian Calendar with tiny chocolate eggs for children (and grown-ups).

Rogation Sunday Service/ Walk – 25th 2025. We started from St John’s church and finish at Sandpitts Lane where refreshments were served. Many thanks to Jill and Don for agreeing to host the refreshments and to Steve & Fiona for their musical accompaniment on the walk.

Previous Years

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