Concerts at The Parish Church of St Mary & St Eanswythe

The Bayle, Folkestone, Kent CT20 1SW United Kingdom

Music on a Sunday Afternoon

Sponsored by Canterbury Christ Church University and The Folkestone Creative Foundation

All concerts start at 3pm

NEXT CONCERT

 

Sunday 19 February

Michael Chandler (piano)

 

Sunday 11 March

Mozart Requiem CCCU Choral Society directed by Prof. Grenville Hancox.

 

music

  

Concert in church

Friday-Sunday 18-20 May

The fifth Sacconi Chamber Music Festival will take place Friday 18 May - Sunday 20 May inclusive.
To mark this fifth anniversary, the concerts will feature several quintets and we are more than delighted that the remarkably gifted pianist, Tom Poster, will be making a very welcome return visit.

Full details will be available in church and on the Quartet’s website www.sacconi.com

Sunday 3 June

John Irving (fortepiano).
The newly appointed Head of the Music Department Canterbury Christ Church University
will be performing a programme of Mozart Sonatas and Fantasias on his own fortepiano.

Tickets for the Sunday afternoon concerts will be available on the door from 2.15pm on the day, and seats for all concerts can be reserved in advance by calling 01303 220 870 Mon-Fri 9.30am-3pm; 01303 257 248 evenings and weekends.

Tickets £8 unless otherwise indicated. Children & students in full-time education free.

To be added to our email or postal list for regular updates please contact Ian Gordon 01303 257 248 or email n_grdn@yahoo.co.uk

Concerts in United Reformed Church, Folkestone

Concerts in Holy Trinity Church, Folkestone

About St Eanswythe and Folkestone's old Parish Church

Christian worship has been offered on or near this site since 630 AD when Eadbald, King of Kent, built a convent and church for his daughter Eanswythe - believed to be the first religious house with an abbess in the country. His father, King Ethelbert, had welcomed St Augustine and his monks in 597.  Eanswythe died in about 640 AD and was made a saint soon after. Her relics became a focus of pilgrimage and in 1138 were brought into the present church (the fourth to occupy this site) on 12 September - the date we still keep as our Patronal Festival.
 
In the 11th century the Priory was established but was suppressed like almost all the others, by Henry VIII in 1534 and the church entered a long period of neglect and decline.
 
Canon Matthew Woodward, vicar from 1851 to 1898, transformed it into the beautiful church you see today, with stained glass, murals and mosaics of the highest quality.

St Eanswythe
St Eanswythe

  St Eanswythe's relics were re-discovered in 1885 during work in the Chancel and are now kept in niche behind a brass grill in the north wall of Sanctuary of the High Altar, close by Woodward's memorial brass plate. They provide an inspiring link with the far-off days of Pope Gregory and St Augustine and the return of Christianity to Britain 300 years after the Roman occupation ended.

 

St Eanswythe