All Saints brew up plan for coffee mornings

The simple post to Facebook said: “Join us for the revival of our super popular coffee mornings in All Saints. We look forward to seeing you there.”

The post was made by Jenny Horner, the wife of the incumbent vicar at the beautiful Mullingar church that is All Saints, Rev Ian Horner. The coffee morning is a social gathering, where visitors are invited to make a donation to a nominated charity. Last Friday’s beneficiary was St Dominick’s Meals on Wheels.

“I suppose the coffee mornings had this really lovely history in the town. It stopped during Covid a lot of things stopped, and then they’re difficult to get back up and running again,” Jenny told the Westmeath Examiner about the revived social gathering.

Rev Horner spent the last 10 years serving in the Bailieborough Group of parishes in the diocese of Kilmore, where he is also an archdeacon. Mullingar Union of Parishes is a recent appointment: “We’re kind of new to the parish. When there is a vacancy, things get laid down. Loads of people spoke about the coffee mornings and what a great thing they had been.

“We’ve got a group of people together. There’s a whole team of volunteers now. Arthur and Marion have been working all week on this. It’s just a great way to support local charities, but also to get people together,” Ms Horner said.

All Saints Church is one of the most historical places in Mullingar. The present church building is two centuries old but there has been a church on the site for more than 800 years.

Stained glass windows from several closed churches such as Ballymore and Mount Temple are now features of All Saints’. The late 1990s saw a refurbishment in All Saints’ Church where a new gallery was put into the church and the western end of the nave turned into a new church hall.

“It’s just absolutely beautiful,” Jenny said of the historic building. “I think they’ve done something quite remarkable here. When they modernised to change the space like this, they managed to keep a really traditional feeling building.”

The intention is to continue the coffee morning as a monthly gathering: “This month our charity is Meals on Wheels. There is a little group of people who are running this, we have a whole list of charities that we’ve brainstormed. We haven’t settled exactly on who’s going to be in December, but it is about supporting local charities,” she concluded.