Malpas Parish News

Malpas Parish News

The Parish News was started at the time of a Stewardship Campaign by St Oswald's during 1971.
The campaign seems to have had two main objectives:
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1/ To encourage more involvement between the church and the community at large;
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2/ To encourage regular financial support for the church, through regular giving and by other means.
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The campaign was launched by the Rector, Canon Michael Rylands, with a talk and slideshow at St Oswald's Church in November 1971.

The slideshow was put together by (Major) John James (who used to live at the Red House in Church Street).
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The Parish News started life as an A4 (or quarto?), publication which was duplicated on a hand operated Roneo ink duplicator, then collated and stapled each month by volunteers from various Malpas organisations.
It was delivered by hand through a rota of volunteers, to Malpas and the surrounding area.

Eventually the operation was moved into the choir vestry under the church tower.
It was still collated and stapled by volunteers but the actual printing was undertaken by only a few volunteers, who understood the vagaries of the duplicator.
Things improved greatly when the church (under Rector Terry Etheridge) bought an electrically powered duplicator, from a company which provided a fairly reliable maintenance and back-up service.

The time arrived early in this century, when it became difficult to rely on volunteers and the decision was taken to have the magazine printed professionally by a printer based in Nantwich, although preparation of copy and distribution were still voluntary operations.

Although it continued as a voluntarily distributed publication until just a few years ago, with the Covid19 pandemic in March 2020 it was decided to discontinue it as a print publication and to publish it only online, on the St Oswald's church's website.

Malpas did in fact have a Malpas Parish Magazine published as early as January 1866 and this may have continued which may have continued as a monthly publication until the Malpas Deanery Magazine was first published in 1896.

The Deanery Magazine carried news from all the churches in the Malpas Rural Deanery.