Concerts at The Parish Church of St Mary & St Eanswythe

Music on a Saturday Afternoon presented by

Honorary President Rev. Dr. John Walker

Chairman: Ian Gordon

Concert Secretary: Prof. Grenville Hancox

Honorary Patron Mark Simpson

Bayle Music

Our Sunday Eucharist will be broadcast on our Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/sainteanswythe

and on our YouTube page at ‘St Eanswythe’ For links to these sites and further information please see our church website https://stmaryandsteanswythe.org/

St Mary and St Eanswythe Church will be open to visitors and for silent prayer 11.00am to 1.00pm, Tuesday to Saturday.

Everyone is welcome to visit this significant historic church.

Finding Eanswythe: The life and afterlife of an Anglo-Saxon saint

https://findingeanswythe.uk/

The Bayle, Folkestone, Kent CT20 1SW United Kingdom

A warm welcome awaits you in the beautiful space that is St Eanswythe’s Church, The Bayle, Folkestone CT201SW (consecrated 1138) Its magnificent acoustic together with the tranquil surrounds of the church, is very special, as so too are the artists appearing in this series. An exciting partnership is launched in this series between Bayle Music with Folkestone Early Music and Folkestone New Music offering performance of compositions from the seventeenth to twenty first centuries.

Welcome to Bayle Music!

Sounds Folkestone Website
Bayle Music Kindly Sponsored by
 
Chistina and Norman Brisk
Atherton Grassroots Fund

 

 

As the 2022-23 season gets underway, once again, Bayle Music is extremely grateful to Fr John Walker, Parish Priest at St Mary & St Eanswythe’s and the Churchwardens for their support and encouragement in the presentation of our concerts.

As restrictions on social gatherings are lifted, we will dispense with social distancing for audiences and recommend, but not demand, that masks be worn. We also ask that those who are not double vaccinated should have a negative Covid test in the 48 hours prior to the concert.

 

Bayle Music 2023-2024

 

Bayle Music at The Grand

The Green Room

Wednesday 4th October 7pm

Sir Nicholas Kenyon will give a talk entitled The Pied Pipers of Early Music

Nick Kenyon has been Controller of Radio 3, Director of the BBC Proms and Managing Director of the Barbican Centre. He is now the opera critic of the Telegraph and a visiting scholar in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge.

Tickets £5

Saturday 21 October 3 pm

Kosmos Trio

Saturday 18 November 3 pm

Grand Mansions Collective with Marianne Kelly (piano)

Saturday 16 December 3 pm

Bonafide Trombone Quartet

 

SPECIAL FUND RAISING CONCERT

Outside the series

Saturday 23 December 2023 at 3 pm at The Grand

Programme to include Britten Ceremony of Carols Bayle Cantata with Alex Rider (harp) in aid of Motor Neurone Disease

 

 

Concert in church

 

2024

Saturday 20 January 3 pm

Grand Mansions Collective

Saturday 17 February 3 pm

Matthew Rose (baritone) Schubert Winterreise

Saturday 16 March 3 pm

Ryan Corbett (accordion) BBC New Generation Young Artist

Saturday 20 April 3 pm

Grand Mansions Collective

(17-19 May 2024 Sacconi Festival

Full details in the new year)

 

At St Mary & St Eanswythe Parish Church

Saturday 22 June 3 pm

Caritas Chamber Choir (to be confirmed)

Saturday 20 July 3 pm - tbc

Saturday 24 August 3 pm - tbc

Saturday 21 September tbc

All enquiries for Bayle Music

07723 767 624

Tickets for Bayle Music Concerts are £15 unless otherwise stated.

Advance online bookings for all Bayle Music events can be made here:

https://www.soundsfolkestone.co.uk/initiatives/bayle-music/

To be included in our email information list, please contact bayleman@gmail.com

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

The Parish Church of St Mary & St Eanswythe

  St Eanswythe's relics were re-discovered in 1885 during work in the Chancel and are now preserved in a 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 150 years after the Roman occupation ended.

On 6 March in the presence of the Rt Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover, Rev. Darren Miller Archdeacon of Ashford, Rev Dr John Walker, parish priest, the Mayor of Folkestone and a packed church Dr Andrew Richardson of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust announced that the detailed investigation of the relics carried out in January 2020 proved conclusively that they were the relics of St Eanswythe herself.

St Eanswythe

Crowthers of Canterbury (Wind Instruments)
 

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