For the past twenty six years there has been a flower arranging team doing the flowers each week except during Lent and Advent when no flowers are allowed in Church.

Prior to this Mrs. Briston did the flowers but due to ill-health Canon Tangney asked me to do them whilst we were waiting in the sacristy for a family bride to sign the register, so there was no escape!

Shortly afterwards Mrs. Angela Taylor offered to help me. As we were both working in those days, we used to come into church about 7pm on Fridays and stay until they were finished, sometimes until 10pm if there was a wedding the following day. Later on when I retired and Angela was still working, Sheila Crossland offered to help and stayed many years until she became unwell. Other ladies have also come forward and stayed for a numbered of month, eg. Lily Durkin, Della Gorman, and Ann Ferguson. My apologies if I have missed someone.

Sadly Betty Thornton died last year; she had been on Maureen's team for a number of years.

At present we have two teams comprising of: Miss Maureen Madden, Mrs. Pat Backhouse, and Mrs. Angela Hayes. The other team is Mrs. Angela Taylor, Miss Christine Priestley and I.

Flower arranging no longer seems to be in the curriculum for night schools, so if anyone is interested in learning or coming along, if you have some knowledge then we would welcome you with open arms.
We usually meet on Friday mornings at approx 10.15am and aim to be finished by lunchtime. If there is a big feast day both teams work together. Weddings usually take longer with just one team. Apart from St. Theresa's, we have arranged flowers for weddings at: Corpus Christi, St. Nicholas's, the old St. Patrick's and the Cathedral.

The Cathedral was quite nerve racking as we worked in the cellar and had to carry the flowers up a spiral staircase!! As a result of our work at the Cathedral we have helped their ladies do flowers on big feasts and also when St. Theresa of Lisieux's relics were there.

Do please come along and give us a hand. This does not only apply to ladies – there are some excellent male flower arrangers including a Rev. McMillan who is a Methodist minister and an international arranger.

Wynne Hirst.