roots down walls down
Please join us for the annual meeting of parishioners and APCM on Sunday 26 April 2026 at 12:00 in Church.
St Mary’s church, Vale Rd, Ash Vale, GU12 5JE
If you need a copy of the annual report please ask one of the PCC members in church or email the office. Thank you.
parishoffice@ash-vale.org.uk
Community Coffee Morning (Ladies only)
RSVP to: Ash Ahmadiyya Muslim Ladies Association
07396 105 966
Did you know?
As part of our journey to become more eco-friendly, the St Mary’s Flower Team has been working to make our church flowers more sustainable. It’s not been easy, but they have done such an amazing job already, we wanted to celebrate their creativity!
Minimising the miles: Flowers in supermarkets and shops are often flown from all around the globe – how else would people be able to give roses on St Valentine’s Day, when roses are not in bloom in the UK? This means that many of the flowers available to buy – and especially at ‘budget’ prices – have a huge environmental cost in terms of their carbon footprint. Our Flower Team tries to reduce this impact by growing and using local whenever they can and it’s wonderful when local gardeners from our community offer their in-season greenery and flowers to help decorate the church. If you’re planting your garden this spring, why not sow a few extras for St Mary’s? Or wait to prune your greenery for when the Flower Team needs supplies? There are plans to set up a WhatsApp group to help share news on what’s available in our home gardens; if you’d like to join this group, please contact the Parish Office.
Phasing out single-use plastic: Traditional green floral foam blocks – often referred to by the famous brand name ‘Oasis’ – are made of plastic foam. New, plastic-free versions are being developed, but there is still uncertainty about how well they will actually biodegrade. The Flower Team has tried various alternatives with limited success in the past but change is in the air: our lovely Easter display this year was 100% floral foam free, relying instead on stacked vases, chicken-wire, twine and reusable ‘flower frogs’!
Reuse, repot, recycle: Instead of only using cut flowers this Easter, did you notice the beautiful pots of living flowers? These are on loan, will last several weeks and can then go back to their home to be enjoyed in the garden or grown on for next year. The team would love to do more with living plants throughout the year – if you’d like to help with growing and tending pots for seasonal displays, they’d love to hear from you.
If you are interested in helping the Flower Team with donations of flowers and plants, hands-on arranging, or making tea and wielding a vacuum cleaner (all essential team activities), please speak to Stephanie at church or email the Parish Office and your message will be passed on. Thank you! Parishoffice@ash-vale.org.uk
We just had to write in our blog today to send a huge THANK YOU to all the students, staff and families at Ash Manor School for their wonderful donations this Easter. It was an enormous help, filling food parcels and enabling us to give out Easter treats to every client – just in time for Easter. Your support make all the difference to us, not just the items themselves, but also the impact of raising awareness, so that families in need know where to turn, and those with enough to share can donate to help our project.
I would like to add a special thank you to one of our youth volunteers, who has just completed his bronze DofE volunteering with us. He started in January and has picked everything up very quickly, becoming a key team member of the youth team on Thursday nights. He has helped to feed ~150 families during his DofE volunteering with us, and is an absolute star! We continue to enjoy the wonderful help of our other young volunteers on Thursday evenings too. These super stars have continued to be a huge help every week. This term, as an extra project, they have made up colouring packs, so that children could make Mother’s Day cards, and had some Easter activities to do. They have even started sourcing some excellent gifts for children, a great start to our huge challenge at Christmas to send every client a Christmas present. They have been an amazing help, with everything from stock management to fridge checks, and from food parcel packing to fundraising, publicity and posters. They are a credit to their families and to Ash Manor School.
The feedback from clients is that life is increasingly difficult at the moment. We have had some very moving messages of thanks, explaining what a huge help the food parcels are to local people in times of need. Every story is different, but the common thread is the huge difference that something as simple as a food parcel can make. Thank you for being part of this story of hope for the local community in the Ash Villages.
Our warmest wishes and heartfelt thanks from everyone at the Ash Villages Food Parcels Project. We coudn’t do it without you!
Need help? Contact Citizens advice for a referral or visit St Mary’s church and ask for a church referral in person. We cover anyone in need in Ash, Ash Vale, Ash Green or Tongham.
Want to donate? We are so grateful for all support! You can donate food items at Ash Manor, Ash Vale Co-op, St Mary’s Church or The Chapel on Wharf Rd. If you prefer to donate funds so we can but what is most needed, there is a donations link here: https://givealittle.co/c/7a47190c-ad4e-4cf9-8662-da844101a41c
Thank you for your support!
There is a lot going on in Holy Week! Come and join us:
Thursday 2ndApril – Maundy Thursday Service and shared meal at St Mary’s (church on Vale Road GU12 5JE) 6pm for a 6:30pm start
Friday 3rdApril—Good Friday Walk of witness starts at St Marys 9:45am. We walk down to Ash Wharf for the 10:30am open air service at Ash Wharf with Churches Together, and NWCLF, then we have fellowship, tea and hot cross buns afterwards at The Chapel (Wharf Rd GU12 5AY)
St Mary’s church will be open from 2pm for prayer and meditation on the cross. Art and craft for all.
Saturday 4thApril Come and help decorate St Mary’s ready for Easter Sunday from 10am. Bring flowers with you or use the ones provided.
8pm we meet in the Vicarage Garden to share the story of the resurrection of Jesus around the bonfire.
Sunday 5th April—Easter Sunday! Yes!! We come together to celebrate the living Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. 10:30am start.
All welcome.
He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
The Ash Villages Food Parcels Project began as a local response to hardship, during COVID-19 in 2020, and has evolved to become the local foodbank for Ash, Ash Vale, Ash Green and Tongham. Our footprint covers recognised areas of deprivation including Ash Wharf. We jointly run the project as a partnership between St Marys Church Ash Vale (Revd Neil Lambert) and the Ash Villages Support Circle (Cllr Carla Morson). The Project Manager is employed by St Mary’s Church, and all other team members are volunteers. The Chapel Project on Wharf Rd (old Methodist church) hosts us on site.
Our project is in ever-increasing demand, partly due to the cost of living increasing, and also because a lot of housing development is happening locally, increasing the local population. Each new housing project brings an element of social or affordable housing, and the people who relocate here are often in financial shock after the cost of moving, and in need of support as they have moved away from their familiar networks and other sources of help. We delivered 1560 parcels in 2025 (a 50% increase from 1040 parcels in 2024) feeding over 4600 people, and demand is forecast to be even higher for 2026. Our clients are referred to us by DWP, CAB, schools, social services, local churches and other agencies. Every story is different but all need help.
Our grass-roots model is tailor-made for our local community. Our Food Parcels are delivered to the doorstep, which is an unusual model for a foodbank, but much needed in our dispersed villages location. Delivery is a big help for a lot of our clients who suffer with disabilities, or mental health challenges, or have small children, or have no transport, or no funds for the bus. It also saves time for other agencies such as social workers who would otherwise have to collect. Three cheers for all the volunteers who prep, pack and deliver!
We include signposting of other essential help, for example CAB or CAP for debt advice, referral to the wellbeing team, and the 2 local warm hubs (community cafés at St Mary’s and The Chapel) for an opportunity to socialise, use the free wifi and ask for an emergency voucher. Because we know our clients, we can also send appropriate flyers to invite clients to join in with free community activities (toddler groups, summer fair, picnic and play, library services, Hear Here, etc) and help people to overcome the isolation that often comes with having a very limited budget.
We would like to ask your support please, to keep the project going and help fill the parcels with food and essential toiletries. We estimate that filling the food parcels will cost £35,000 this year, and we will need to fundraise and reach out to all available sources of help to achieve this, including you! £90 a week provides healthy fresh fruit and veg for every parcel. £15 a week goes on baked beans. Can you manage a one-off donation today, or even a regular donation to help us every month? Or pop a tin of beans in to the box at the Chapel when you’re passing? Every penny helps! Let’s make sure that no-one in our community ever needs to go to bed hungry. We can do this if we all pull together!
Thank you for your support.
Donations link: https://givealittle.co/c/7a47190c-ad4e-4cf9-8662-da844101a41c
You might have received this letter in your recent food parcel. For anyone who is a client but has lost the letter – here it is agin just in case.
Foodbank News: Ash Villages Food Parcels Project
Dear friends and neighbours,
Greetings from the Ash Villages Food Parcels Project. Whether your food parcel is a one-off, or you use us every month, we are here to help you in difficult times. The volunteer team are amazing, please join us in thanking them all! We are sending this letter to let you know about cut off times, bank holidays community groups and the community fridge.
Cut-off time for requests is 5pm
Please remember that if you are already on our books and need a food parcel, the cut-off time for requests is 5pm on Tuesday nights for a Wednesday parcel or 5pm on Thursday nights for a Friday parcel. This is to allow the team to plan, shop and pack in time to send things out on the following morning. If you send a message after 5pm it will not be received in time. After 5pm our team will be busy preparing food parcels, not checking the phone. If you are late, we will add you to the next available list.
Bank Holidays: We are CLOSED on Good Friday 3rd April 2026
Just to make everyone aware, we will be closed on Good Friday. So please be sure to request a parcel on the Wednesday that week. You are very welcome to come to The Chapel (on Wharf Rd, near the doctors) on Good Friday for a free cuppa and hot cross bun. We will be serving hot cross buns from 11:30am until 1:00pm.
Come and use the Ash Vale Community Fridge:
Did you know? We don’t just run a foodbank; we also have the Ash Vale Community Fridge at The Chapel in the shed in our carpark. It is open 24/7 for people to donate good food that they don’t need and take whatever they can use. It is our way of making sure that nothing is wasted. If the foodbank brings you something you don’t like, why not pop it in here for someone else? And come and see if there is anything you fancy to take home. The foodbank team also puts surplus donations in here every week, (usually sandwiches, salad, veg) so that nothing we receive gets wasted. If you are passing, please also bring us your bags to re-use! We use over 100 carrier bags a week for food parcels, so we are happy to use them again if we can.
Join us for Community Café and other groups:
You are warmly invited to all our community groups and events at Ash Vale Chapel and St Mary’s Ash Vale. Here is a list of term time activities, these are all free / by donation:
St Mary’s Church (Vale Road):
The Chapel (Wharf Rd, near the doctors)
We wish you a peaceful Lent and a blessed Easter.
With our best wishes from the food parcels team and all of us at St Mary’s and The Chapel
Find us online: https://ash-vale.org.uk/foodparcels-2/
Find us on Facebook: @AshValeChapel
Foodbank Phone line: 07762136542 (phone / text / WhatsApp / iMessage)
Bishop Sarah Mullally will be installed as the New Archbishop of Canterbury this Wednesday. The service is due to be broadcast on BBC1 at 14.30pm.
You can download the order of service via the Church of England website online here:
Cries in The Desert
A series of 6 short films which, together, create a 30 minute experience that redefine perceptions of AlUla, Saudi Arabia. This is a new artwork by international artists musson+retallick and Wilderthorn which reaches across cultural boundaries to connect past, present and future.
Join us at The Chapel on Wharf Road in Ash Vale on Wednesday 18th March 2026 at 7pm. Artist in residence Jono Retallick will be showing his latest project, come and see!
The Ash Villages Food Parcels Project would like to say a big thank you to Ash Parish Council, for their support of £500 to help us keep the foodbank running in 2026. This is hugely appreciated, and will help lots of local families in Ash, Ash Vale, Ash Green and Tongham. We were especially delighted to hear that the decision was unanimous, so a big thank you to all those involved in making the decision to support our application for help. THANK YOU!
What is the Ash Villages Food Parcels Project? We started out as a Covid Support Project, and have evolved to become the loacl foodbank for Ash, Ash Vale, Ash Green and Tongham. The project is a joint initiative between St Mary’s Church Ash Vale (Revd Neil Lambert) and the Ash Villages Support Circle (Carla Morson). We are here to help anyone in our commmunity who is hungry and has no means of buying food. You can be referred to us by the GP, local schools, Social Services, Childrens Services, local churches and other agencies. We suppported over 4,600 people last year, and expect this to increase in 2026 due to the cost of living and the increase in local population too.
Can you help us in 2026? We are so thankful to all our local supporters and donors. Whether you donate tins and packets, or make donations of funds, it all helps us to keep the doors open and keep feeding local people in crisis. Here’s how you can support us in 2026:
Thank you for your support – let’s make sure that noone in our community ever needs to go hungry in 2026.
Contact us: projectmanager@ash-vale.org.uk