Gooderstone Tribute Weekend

Back to Village Life

with Floral Displays

St George’s Church 5th and 6th September 2009

Saturday and Sunday - 10.00am - 5.00pm for the displays

Sunday 6.00pm for the service, attended by the Bishop of Lynn

There is a dual purpose to this weekend. First we want to get people together who have something in common; that is, they have a relative, friend, neighbour, someone about whom they cared or someone they just knew well, who is buried in Gooderstone churchyard. This special weekend concludes with a Memorial Service, attended by The Bishop of Lynn, to be held on Sunday 6th at 6.00pm. during which the names of all who have been buried over the last 50 years will be read out and prayers said for them. The names of any buried before then will be read out upon prior request but all who are buried in "God's Acre", will be commemorated.

To make this tribute more poignant and significant there will be displays of photographs and other memorabilia and artefacts, portraying historic Gooderstone, its people and village life. For centuries flowers have been used to adorn coffins and graves, in this way too all the displays will be decorated with flowers. Be assured this is not an occasion to be mournful or morbid, far from it, it is an opportunity for us to give thanks for those who have gone before us, known and unknown and to pay tribute to them.

The second purpose is to display something of their life and times. Many unknown stories covering the complexity of human life lie beneath the ground of churchyards. They are impossible to imagine just from the words that are written on a headstone. Memorial inscriptions, however touching the verses they carry, tell us little of the person buried nearby. This tribute weekend aims to put some detail and character onto the impersonal. Behind the short inscription, "A devoted wife and mother," could be someone who lost her husband in the First World War, brought up eight children on her own and worked her fingers to the bone. Each person buried in Gooderstone village churchyard had their part to play in the village's developing history; this Tribute Weekend will celebrate that fact.

The Norfolk Archive Office will be helping by producing and displaying old registers and items that are in their safe-keeping. Children from Gooderstone C of E Primary School are presenting a short play along with their own song about village life in the past.

Everyone is welcome to come along to view the displays, to enjoy the flowers and to find out more about the village and to attend the service, whether or not they have someone in the churchyard. The exhibition and the service will enable people to come together in some small way to view Gooderstone village history and, in particular, understand a little more about the people who have gone before us who contributed to and made that history. Gooderstone today would not be as it is without them. This Tribute Weekend is for them.

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments,
but what is woven into the lives of others."

Pericles (495 BC-429 BC)