Long Melford church closed after wood panel falls from height
"We are very sorry to report that the main body of the church is temporarily closed whilst a safety inspection is carried out," the church said on its website. "A wooden plinth fell from a considerable height and we cannot open the main body of the church until all the high woodwork has been physically checked. "We know many people have planned to visit Holy Trinity when visiting Suffolk and are so sorry we cannot share all of our wonderful church with you."The church thanked people for their understanding.Holy Trinity Church has been approached for comment.
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BBC News
16 hours ago
- BBC News
Tensions mount over temporary fence barring swans
A wooden fence put up around an unsafe slipway has caused anger after it prevented dozens of swans getting to where they feed and rest. The boat slipway next to The Boulevard at Oulton Broad, near Lowestoft in Suffolk, was shut by The Broads Authority. The authority stressed the new wooden fencing was only a temporary measure while it made plans to repair the many locals and visitors have been left frustrated, with some even attempting to remove it - something the authority described as "irresponsible". Onlookers cheered as a section was removed by several people on Rix, 68, a retired builder, was one of the people involved in the removal and was happy to see the swans being able to roam said he was not worried of any repercussions, however."They've got their freedom back - that should never have been taken away from them in the first place," he said."Nobody asked, they just put it up and built a prison for them, it's wrong."When challenged by the BBC over his actions, Mr Rix said he understood the safety concerns and was aware there were five signs warning people to stay away. Nikki Thomas is a local business owner and long term resident of Oulton was not involved in the removal of the fence but said "generations" of people had come to love the swans."They [the swans] are depressed because their normal resting area is up here on the grass," she explained."They get fed in the mornings and evenings by locals and visitors alike."They can't access it. When it's high tide they can't even get out of the water because they have covered the slipway as well where they used to walk up at high tide to their resting areas." 'My friends' Laurie Rookie, 90, comes down with buckets of seed three times a week for the swans, spending about £2,000 each year in the process. "I was devastated to see the fence, I couldn't believe it," he said. "I saw no reason for it."They're wild birds but they are my friends and I've been meeting them for years - that's my pleasure in old age to do something for wildlife."I get tonnes of pleasure out of it and I hope other people do to." A spokesperson for the Broads Authority said it was aware of people's concerns and the removal of part of the fence."The recent removal of a section of the fence by concerned individuals is not a responsible action and has made it more difficult to manage this safety risk," they said."We urge members of the public to allow the appropriate authorities to address these issues safely and legally. "We are currently working to identify a more satisfactory and permanent solution."The authority did not yet have a timescale for the completion of the works. Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
Schools need more help with phone bans, says Suffolk head teacher
A head teacher who tightened rules around pupils' mobile phone use said more help was needed from the government to enforce Hurst, the head of Thomas Mills High School and Sixth Form in Framlingham, Suffolk, changed the school's phone policy a year ago so devices were kept in lockers and "out of sight and out of mind".He said the change had benefited students, but felt there was still an "uphill battle" to protect children from the dangers presented on social Department for Education (DfE) said it supported schools to "take the necessary steps to prevent disruption". Mr Hurst said the new rules on mobile phones had "gone down very well" with his pupils and less phones were being said children had told him they enjoyed socialising with each other and were "starting to feel less overwhelmed"."I think there's an argument as to whether government should play a greater role because in some ways the arguments that apply for us, apply to every child, every school in the country," he said."Why are we having all these individual decisions and debates?"Mr Hurst said he did not want to ban phones from a child's life, but added children today were facing tougher challenges thanks to smartphones and had "a right to be protected". Different atmosphere Unity Schools Partnership, a school's trust that runs tens of schools across Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk, recently announced it would be going smartphone free during the school day by September next year, after seeing the positive results from other schools. "What we're seeing in the schools where the phones are looked after [by staff] in the school day is a different atmosphere, Tim Coulson, the chief executive of the trust said. "We're seeing children reverting to the kind of behaviour during lunchtimes, playtimes, that we would all remember as adults where children are playing with each other rather than talking with each other via their social media accounts."We've spent a year thinking about it, we spent a year going to visit other schools, having a lot of debates across the head teachers across the schools, and have come to a view that this is the right and best thing to do with children." Daisy Greenwell, from Woodbridge, Suffolk, and co-found of the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign, agreed with Mr Hurst and said she wanted to see a government mandate on the issue and funding to help schools."I completely agree the government needs to do more," she said."Right now they are so far behind where the public is on this issue - all polling and surveys around the country agree that schools should be smartphone free."When I was at school in the 1980s, Tamagotchis were banned because they were deemed too distracting and now we give kids pocket supercomputers and expect them to do trigonometry and not be on TikTok, it's crazy." The DfE said schools already had the power to ban phones and there was "clear guidance" on how to restrict phone usage."Even before the guidance was introduced around 97% of schools were restricting mobile phone use, but we know that there are wider issues with children's online experiences, which is why we are also bringing in better protections from harmful content through the Online Safety Act," the spokesperson added. Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Spectator
2 days ago
- Spectator
What I'll miss about Norman Tebbit
This column comes to you from Auckland Castle, former palace and hunting lodge of the Prince Bishops of Durham. We, the Rectory Society, are here by kind permission of its saviour, Jonathan Ruffer, celebrating our 20th anniversary. Jonathan rescued the castle not from the heathen but from the Church of England. The last Anglican bishop to inhabit it was Justin Welby, in his brief year at Durham before being translated to Canterbury, but it had been run down for many years before that. Bishop Auckland is in one of the poorest parts of England but it did not occur to the Church authorities to use the heritage of this astonishing place to minister to the poor. Here is history and art and architecture and parks and gardens and the largest private chapel in Europe and the river Wear and a town at its gates, yet the place fell asleep with a Do Not Resuscitate notice attached to its recumbent body by the Church Commissioners. Under Ruffer, it has woken like a King Arthur of the north, reclaiming the leadership of this part of Christian England. First he bought Zurbaran's wonderful paintings of Jacob and his sons and then restored the dining-room which the enlightened and profoundly rich Bishop Trevor built specially for them in the 1750s. A philosemite, Trevor bought the pictures to further his support of the 'Jew Bill', which tried to confer proper citizenship rights on Jews. Then Ruffer bought the whole castle, beautified it, established a Museum of Faith which tells the story of all religion in Britain from prehistoric times to the present, installed a Spanish gallery, a museum of mining, told the history of England in an annual summer pageant called Kynren, got the gardens rewalled and blooming, and spent well over £100 million of his own money in the process. As we arrived, a party of excited schoolchildren departed, having got answers to questions you daren't ask teachers now, like: 'What was the Reformation?' As part of the entertainment, we had an hour of singing in Cosin's 17th-century chapel hymns that had been written in parsonage houses, cheating a bit at the edges. Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts, Mrs C.F. Alexander, George Herbert, John Henry Newman and John Newton all got a look in, as did Cosin himself. I had held one hymn in reserve in case we had time, and we did. This was 'From Greenland's Icy Mountains', by Reginald Heber. We used to sing it with gusto at my village primary school, but it is now cancelled because it says that in un-Christianised lands, 'The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone'. It is remarkably vivid about exotic climes, however, and Heber wrote it before he had been to them. He did so not in his own rectory but in that of his father-in-law, who asked him to compose a hymn for the meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel the following day. Heber did so in 20 minutes. Later, he became Bishop of Calcutta, a diocese which included all India, southern Africa and Australia. He died in 1826, sadly young, in a bath in Trichinopoly after a hot day's missionary work. Such are modern conditions that it is time for developing-world Christians to write a Heber-style hymn in reverse about how to bring the true faith to darkest England. I had decided not to include any hymns by F.W. Faber, Newman's fellow Oratorian and hated rival. To my taste, at least, they are too floridly emotional. On Monday, however, as the House of Lords debates the Hereditary Peers Bill (3rd Reading), which will expel all such peers, I shall take comfort in Faber's lines from 'There's a wideness in God's mercy': 'There is grace enough for thousands/ Of new worlds as great as this;/ There is room for fresh creations/ In that upper home of bliss.' The Court Circular reporting the state banquet for President Macron at Windsor Castle last week listed those who 'had the honour of being invited' and explained who they were. The list included 'Sir Michael Jagger (Musician) and Ms Melanie Hamrick' and 'Sir Elton John (philanthropist) and Mr David Furnish'. I wonder how those descriptions were settled. Is Sir Michael not a philanthropist? Is Sir Elton not a musician? One thing I shall miss about Norman Tebbit is his way with words. They had unusual economy and exactness. In November 1990, between the two ballots of the Conservative leadership campaign, I heard him being interviewed on the BBC. Michael Heseltine had won fewer votes than Mrs Thatcher in the first ballot but nevertheless enough to force her to resign. He therefore needed more votes to win on the second. 'They say there's an avalanche moving for Mr Heseltine,' said the BBC interviewer. Every other politician would have accepted this dead metaphor unthinkingly. Not Norman. 'First time I've heard of an avalanche going uphill,' he said. When editing this paper in the 1980s, I invited Tebbit and Jimmy Goldsmith to the same lunch. They had not met before and got on very well. Both complained about the lack of impressive figures in public life. 'We need more eelan,' said Norman in the accent of his native Ponders End. I could see that Goldsmith, who was half-French, did not understand what Tebbit was saying. 'Élan,' I muttered to him, like an interpreter at a summit. Jimmy's eyes lit up in comprehension, and agreement. The two men might have pronounced it differently, but both had it. 'Hope for the future' said the T-shirts and banners for a conference about something or other taking place in the Methodist Central Hall as I walked past last week. The pedant in me always dislikes this phrase: how can hope be for anything other than the future? But then I reflect that if the future is truly bleak, we must place all our hope in the past.
