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18 Mar, 4 tweets, 2 min read
The tortoise slow combustion stove was a favourite heater for churches and chapels in the 19th century.

#thread
In 1830, ironmonger Charles Portway designed an enclosed metal stove to heat his shop in Halstead, Essex. It was so efficient and effective that his neighbours wanted one too, and Portway’s patented wood-burning and multi-fuel stoves were soon booming.
The stoves were renowned for their energy efficiency; fuel burned so slowly that they were nicknamed 'tortoise stoves'. Portway proudly adopted the tortoise brand, embellishing his stoves with a cast-iron tortoise and a motto inspired by Aesop's beloved fable: 'SLOW BUT SURE'.
You’ll find a slow but sure tortoise stove at St Denis's in East Hatley, Cambridgeshire 🐢
friendsoffriendlesschurches.org.uk/east-hatley/

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More from @friendschurches

Friendless Churches Profile picture
19 Mar
The mountain oak used to form the trusses at St Brothen’s, Llanfrothen were felled in the 1490s. At eye-level, they create a diminishing diamond shape. They form a continuous roof over the nave and chancel. It runs to 73ft (22m) and it takes 14,500 slates to cover it!
#thread Image
The church building dates to the 1200s, but the arch-braced roof trusses and cusped wind braces form a late 15th – early 16th c roof. They’re still doing their job perfectly. 
The site slopes from east to west, and until the 19th century, the church was part of the seashore.

2/ ImageImage
We’ve recently re-roofed the entire church. This was the first time in about 150 years the roof had been overhauled. A combination of slipped and broken slates, and nail fatigue meant we had to strip everything back and create a watertight covering.

3/ Image
Read 7 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
17 Mar
St Patrick was ripped from his home as a teenager. After six years as a slave in the west of Ireland, he trekked the breadth of the island to get home to Britain. He would become the patron saint of Ireland, yet at the end of his life, he felt he had failed.

#thread
Patrick lived in the 5th century. Upon leaving Ireland in his early 20s, he devoted his life to Christ. He returned to Ireland after hearing Vox Hiberionacum – the voice of the Irish – in a dream.

2/
He became the patron saint of Ireland in the 7th century when the embellishment of St Patrick’s story began. Some of the biographers got quite creative, attributing all manner of miracles to the man – from snakes to sprouting staffs.

3/
Read 7 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
13 Mar
In our churches are the stories of countless women. Women who worked lead, glass and oak. Women who fought and suffered for their beliefs. Women who made scientific breakthroughs. Women who poured their pain, love and devotion into making their corner of the world better.
#thread
In the 5th century, at Llanelieu, Powys, Ellyw defied her family’s wishes, dedicating her life to Christ. At the site of her murder, a church was built.

1,500 years later, Bertha Kessler and Katherine Hudson built their own church overlooking Gloucestershire’s Golden Valley.

2/
World Wars shaped Constance Greaves and Joan Howson’s lives. Working more than 60 years apart, they each lent their craft skills to enrich St Beuno’s, Penmorfa. In the 1890s, Greaves carved the screen, pulpit and lectern. Howson created hagiographic windows in the 1950s.

3/
Read 6 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
12 Mar
In 1909, prominent suffragette Isabel Seymour drove around London's West End in a press cart draped in WSPU flags of purple, green, and white, handing out copies of 'Votes for Women' to everyone who would take one.
The following year, she took her show on the road ...
#thread
Seymour was fluent in German, and travelled to Germany, Austria, and Russia, where she spoke to suffragist groups about the militant tactics being used by suffragettes in the UK. She hoped that British suffragettes could inspire women to fight for their freedom around the globe.
But back home, British women still could not vote, participate in government, or even be a churchwarden. Yet women have always found ways to break through these barriers. Like Mary Flint, the only woman Parish Clerk in the Church of England from 1818-1838.
Read 4 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
10 Mar
The church of Barmby on the Marsh in East Yorkshire is dedicated to St Helen of the True Cross, the powerful Greek mother of the first Christian Roman emperor who - in her eighties - travelled the Holy Land in search of Christian relics. Image
The remote church at Llanelieu in Powys, on the edge of the Black Mountains, is dedicated to the more obscure and mysterious St Ellyw, a Welsh virgin martyr and legendary princess. Image
And in Llandawke, Carmarthenshire, the church of St Oudoceus (a male bishop) is closely connected with medieval holy woman St Margaret Marloes, who founded a religious community of women there free from the confines of a convent. Image
Read 4 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
8 Mar
St Beuno's at Penmorfa, Gwynedd showcases the talents of two great craftswomen: windows by the renowned stained glass artist Joan Howson, and a wealth of wood carving by the mysterious Constance Greaves.

#thread
Joan Howson trained at the Liverpool School of Art before being apprenticed to Caroline Townshend. Together, Townshend and Howson opened a studio in Putney in 1920. As well as their shared skills and business they both supported suffragette and socialist causes.
Howson was also an expert conservator of medieval glass; Westminster Abbey entrusted her with the restoration of bomb-damaged windows after WW2.

Two of her windows were installed in St Beuno’s porch between the wars.
Read 6 tweets

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