Carol & Christingle Service, Oak Tree Lights & Christmas Message

Below is the Carol and Christingle service message given by councillor Ross Winser which nicely summarises the year for the parish council. We wish you and your families much joy now and into the new year!

“Good evening everyone, and a very warm welcome to our annual Christingle service. It’s wonderful to see so many of you here — and thank goodness the weather has been kind to us! My name is Ross, and I joined the Parish Council earlier this year, so I have the pleasure of welcoming you and saying a few words before we begin.

Firstly, on behalf of the Parish Council, I’d like to thank St Peter’s Church and Rev. Crutchley for leading this special service again, and a big thank-you also to the Hapstead Hall Management Committee whose hard work makes this event possible. Thank you to our parish councillors Nicky Brown, for leading the provision of mince pies and mulled wine, and Rowena Chalk, who organised the road closure and ensured our tree lights are shining brightly for the season. We are also grateful to legendary Fiona Rocks for all her behind-the-scenes work, and to Jon Pearce for managing the music and sound system this evening.

And the Parish Council would also like to thank you, our community, for your continued support over the past year. Your involvement truly makes a difference and helps motivate us all.

Before I hand over, while I was thinking about what to say this evening – I was reminded how many amazing things have happened in Ardingly this year. From today’s fantastic Christmas Fair, to village day, from Sports Fest in the mult-sport courts for the children, to the revival of our Ardingly Football Club team, and the launch of our new stoolball team. We’ve completed the Pavilion refurbishment, planted daffodils throughout the village, celebrated VE Day, and so many more things. We’ve breathed new life into our playground – but I’ve got an announcement about the playground I’ll make before we close up this evening, so I’ll come back to that before the evening is out.

And of course there are many, many groups that thrive because of the dedication of local people: Scouts, Cubs and Beavers, Guides, Brownies and Rainbows, Ardingly Connected Together, the Cricket Club, our WI groups, the history society, tennis club, and film club — the list goes on and on and it’s a real testament to the spirit of our village and the joy of coming together to spend time with each other. And so you have the parish council’s 100% commitment that we will keep doing all we can to make Ardingly the very best it can be for everyone to enjoy in 2026 and beyond.

And now, I’ll hand over to Rev. Crutchley, Thank you, and enjoy the service!

You may remember that during the summer, some local dads started raising money to improve our playground, and the Parish Council formed a working group to help. Since then, we’ve got the roundabout spinning, we’ve got fresh lines painted on the scooter track, and games painted by the basketball hoop.

But tonight’s special announcement is that in the New Year, we’ll be installing beautiful new wooden swings at the bottom of the playground, next to the start of the zip wire, and we’re hoping to add some monkey bars next to them as well. Two gorgeous oak benches have been donated to finish the area off, and the old Dolphin rocker next to the roundabout will be replaced with a new four-child rocker to freshen up the top area too.

I hope you’re as excited as I am! A huge thank you to everybody that has donated to help us make these improvements – your positive comments on Facebook make a huge difference to everyone involved and keep us all motivated.