Harvest festival

We are mid house renovation and it is unbearable. Funny time then, with our kitchen in pieces, to go to church for the school Harvest Festival. Still, Holy Trinity church on Clapham Common is a very interesting old church built in 1766 and home to the original campaigners who brought an end to slavery. An English Heritage blue plaque on the front of the church is dedicated to William Wilberforce and other members of the Clapham Sect who worshipped here while campaigning to abolish slave trade. A further, bomb- damaged plaque on the exterior south wall of Holy Trinity church also commemorates ten of the Clapham sect members by name. The Clapham Sect was a group of evangelical Christians - among them Wilberforce, Henry Thornton, Granville Sharp and the Rev. John Venn (whose father Henry as a curate in the 1750s helped launch Clapham on its evangelical course). Through their connections to the Sierra Leone Company this group was central to the establishment of Sierra Leone as a refuge for freed slaves. Their members also founded the Church Mission Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society. The interior of the church features stained glass windows depicting members of the Clapham Sect interacting with saints. So there was plenty to think about while the kids were celebrating.