St Margaret's Benefice

The Benefice of St Margaret's with Westcliffe, and East & West Langdon

Part of the Dover Deanery, in the Diocese of Canterbury, Kent.

Welcome to our little corner of England!

  • We are here to serve, connect and support everybody in the villages and hamlets surrounding
    St Margaret's.

  • We strive to be a welcoming and friendly Benefice and look forward to meeting you on your faith journey.

News in brief...

  •  Check Dover Food Bank logopng  for their 'most wanted' page by clicking on their logo

  • Want to be part of our Churchyard Green Team?  Get some fresh air and do a really useful job by helping our team who are doing a superb job in St Margaret's Churchyard - contact outreach@stmargaretsbenefice.org.uk

  • You can now make a donation to St Margaret's Church by texting 'STMARGS' followed by a number between 1 - 20 to 70085, to donate that amount directly to support us in all we do, for example, text 'STMARGS5' to donate £5.  We can also accept donations by card reader which is in the church.  Find out more on our News page.

  • for more news, go to our News... page. I know, it's seamless!

The smallest church in our Benefice, St Mary the Virgin at West Langdon, hosted our October 5th Sunday service, when all our churches come together to worship.  It was delightful to see it full, hear tales of our church saints and to fill it with music and song.  As a Festival Church, there are six services held at West Langdon during the year.  The next service will be Christmas Day at 9.30am.

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The youngsters at our Saturday Service have been busy!

  This month we were thinking about our foundations - the things that we think are important that give us solid ground to build our lives on.  We did this through the parable of the Wise & Foolish Builders, and the children made a terrific picture, complete with real sand!  All the children's work can be found in the Children's Corner in St Margaret's Church - just look lft as you go in the main door, you can't miss it.  We next meet on the 4th November at 10am.

We're now well into our Harvest Season at our four churches, with Harvest Festivals and our local schools and nursery coming in to our buildings to give thanks for the season.  Our churches are beautifully decorated by our dedicated volunteers in lovely Autumnal colours.

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Last Sunday at St Margaret's, we were delighted to mark the 10th anniversary of Dr Emma Ainsley joining us as Director of Music.  We are extremely fortunate to have our long-standing choir enhancing our worship each week, and over these last 10 years they have been taken to new heights under Emma's capable tutorage, guidance and friendship.  The choir sang a specially written song to celebrate the event and Emma was presentd with two beautiful fragrant roses to mark the occasion.  We hope to celebrate many more milestones with Emma and the choir.

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Churchyard Green Gang

We had a fantastic day last Monday, with 20 volunteers reporting for duty at St Margaret's Churchyard – we are very appreciative of their time and efforts. They rediscovered monuments and tidied unattended graves; found inscriptions in Welsh, a resident from Vienna and gave our wonderful trees a therapeutic prune. Fuelled througout the day with tea, coffee, flapjacks, sausage rolls and scones with jam and cream - no wonder they stayed working for so long! We are enormously grateful to Lorna and Martin Hunt for leading the work and we very much hope to have another day in the not too distant future.

Tuesday afternoon was just perfect for Langdon Primary School's Choir Concert at St Margaret's Church.  Warm sunshine, doors wide open, the sound of joyful singing confidently drifting out to our Churchyard Green Team as they gardened away.  It was delightful to host 21 young people under the guidance of Emma Newton as they sang and played through an adventurous selection of songs, filling the church with music.  They even did an encore!  We very much look forward to inviting them over again in the not-to-distant future.

We are delighted to tell you that last year,

St Margaret's Church was the SECOND largest contributor to Dover Food Bank in their entire collection area, with

1.75 tonnes of food donated!

Only Tesco donated more – we beat all the other supermarkets! So an enormous THANK YOU to everyone who drops a tin or two in the box – you make a real difference.

Walk Church rambled around the at St Margaret's countryside on Sunday 25th June, returning to church for well-earned tea and cakes afterwards.  It was a delightfully sociable afternoon, meeting Rev Alex Bienfait from Ashford Town Team Ministry and the other walkers from far and wide, and hopefully will be the first of many  (more info at www.walkchurch.org.uk).  Or maybe it's set the seed of inspiration for us to develop something for the Benefice...

Pentecost - the joyful celebration of the gifts we have been given

There was not a better way to celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birthday of the Christian Church, than to have The Bishop of Dover, Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, take our Pentecost service at St Margaret's.  With joyful music and thoughful worship, we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit and welcomed its guidance in our lives.  We are deeply grateful for +Rose giving us her time and leadership - one week Westminster Abbey, the next St Margaret of Antioch -  but we are all one church with our focus on Jesus Christ.  The sun shone and the church was full of conversation and warmth as we mingled afterwards - a wonderful birthday party!

What a joyous, delightful service we had at St Margaret's for Easter Day - so good to see nearly 90 of you present as we enjoyed the Good News and fabulous music to celebrate the day.  The church looked magnificent in its Easter colours decorated with white lillies and spring flowers.  Also looking delightful was St Peter's at Westcliffe, as you can see below:

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Welcome!