WHAT WE DO BEST
The Church Recording team  record every detail of their chosen local church and these beautifully compiled records form part of the parish and national archives. Recorders work through the summer and often carry on until the unheated church becomes too cold.

During 2007 Jenni Coffey and her team of  Church Recorders are making their way up to the highest church in Derbyshire, St John the Baptist at Chelmorton, which we hope they will enjoy recording this summer. Chairman Angela Kellie would particularly like to thank Jenni for her dedication in producing three beautiful records of Great Longstone, Taddington and Beeley churches, with assistance from Mary Bartlett, who is making a good recovery from her illness last year. In starting her last church we wish Jenni and her team every success.

In June 2006, a number of group leaders in the north-west area had a meeting with Roger Allen, the new national chairman of church recorders, which was a welcome opportunity for all of us to air our views and exchange opinions.  One of the matters discussed was how to achieve some sort of continuity while the group leader compiles a record but the recorders are eager to get on with a new project.  A possible solution would be for us to take part in the Ledgerstone Survey of England and Wales, which aims to record all the incised stone floor slabs in parish churches.  At this stage, and if we volunteered to help (something I will be discussing with the recorders group when we meet for lunch early in August, before this newsletter reaches you), we would be part of a pilot scheme trying out forms and guidance information and refining the recording methods.  Another idea is a “part record” – that is, if a church contains particularly interesting examples of, say, woodwork, but very little else that would justify a full record, we could seek permission to produce an illustrated record of just that.

The team is in relaxation mode at present as St Anne's, Beeley, our twelfth church, being small was recorded in a single summer. While this record is being checked and compiled in preparation for printing there's not much for the team to do except read about and look at churches keeping our ‘eyes in’ for when we start recording our next church, the lucky thirteenth.

The record of St Giles' Church, Great Longstone, is finished and was presented on 5th March 2006. When we presented the St Giles record, the vicar, Clive Thrower, got the choir doing some mental arithmetic to work out a notional value of the CDFAS work needed to produce the record.   Say, an average of six recorders, for three hours on 30 Tuesday mornings a year, for two years, plus checking and compilation, comes to around 1200 hours.   He awarded us an imaginary but generous rate of £25 an hour, making a grand value of £30,000 and thanked us most sincerely for the work!