In response to the current Covid restrictions, Stroud Parish Churches team have been thinking about how best to to remember loved ones who died on All Souls Sunday, and the fallen on Remembrance Sunday. Here they discuss their plans for this November:

WE HAVE to say that we at Stroud Parish Churches are gutted, writes the Stroud Parish Churches team.

Written into our DNA is the invite to you, the community of Stroud, to come into our churches to remember loved ones who have died on All Souls Sunday (November 1), and the fallen on Remembrance Sunday (November 8). These are major events that can’t happen. Large gatherings of this nature are not permitted. Understandably. They would be completely unsafe.

What are we going to do? It’s really important we find a way to do something. This is Remembrance after all.

Here’s the plan - something for us all to join forces to build.

On each church forecourt or foyer we’re going to construct our own cenotaph.

It’s not going to be an upmarket one - less polished, more rough-around-the-edges, but no less fitting for the occasion.

It’s going to be a pyramid shaped stack of stones (a ‘cairn’), with each stone having the name or initial of a loved one who has died marked on it.

We invite you to bring these stones to your local Anglican parish church**, to help build this cairn. It will be set up from October 31 and continue to be built until November 11.

On Remembrance Sunday (November 8), we will invite you to come and insert a poppy firmly into the stack of stones to mark and remember each of the brave fallen from our area.

During these first eleven days of November our churches will have times of being open (noted on posters outside) for remembrance and prayer.

We will also promote the lighting of commemorative candles, in our respective front rooms, at 7pm each day.

Will you join us in the building of this cairn of remembrance?

This unique, inclusive and accessible monument will, we are sure, be poignant for all to see this November in the year of Covid 19.

One other thing. Could you send the names of each loved one who has died, and who you wish to be remembered, to fiona@stroudparishchurches.org.uk?

We are going to read them all out up on the side of a valley overlooking Stroud, film it, and stream it online on stroudparishchurches.org.uk.

You will find our All Souls and Remembrance Sunday Services online here also - first broadcast at 10.10am on the day, and online thereafter.

With love from your local vicars: **Holy Trinity, Slad; All Saints, Uplands; St Laurence’s, Stroud; Holy Trinity, Stroud; St Matthew’s, Cainscross; Church of the Holy Spirit, Paganhill; St John the Baptist, Randwick; St Paul’s, Whiteshill.