Methodism is sometimes thought of as being all about Beetle Drives and fellowship-in-the-jammy-dodgers, an unkind caricature which fails to give due acknowledgement to the movement’s roots in eighteenth-century radicalism. Wesley and his followers offended the Established Church and were barred from its pulpits (although he never left the Church of England, thinking it better to be the leaven in the lump), and offended Bristol’s City Fathers, many of whom had grown immensely rich through the import and export of slaves. Wilberforce is, I suppose, the great hero of the Abolitionist movement, much celebrated during the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in England in 2007. But fifty years before Wilberforce, John and Charles Wesley were delivering fiery abolition sermons to the slavers themselves; O burst thou all their chains in sunder! Thou Saviour of all, make them free, that they may be free indeed!, preached John to an uncomfortable congregation. We don’t know if he needed to retreat to his safe room after that or not, but it makes our rattling of the poor box seem very small beer. But rattle it we do, especially during the Lent Appeal, in aid of this Diocese’s link projects in Angola and Mozambique. It is not only right that this city, which did so nicely out of Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, should send some of its wealth back to support African hospitals and schools in the twenty-first; it is also right, as the Archbishop of Canterbury often, wearily, reminds us, that Christians in Britain support the Anglican Communion, because we are bound one to another, across distance and culture and custom, by our common confession – Jesus Christ – yoked together not by the chains of slavery but bonds of affection. Am I not a Man and a Brother?, asked the shackled African on Josiah Wedgewood’s abolitionist commemorative plaques. We only have to adjust that slogan for gender inclusiveness to make it as relevant for our times as for his and Wesley’s.
Fr Richard Coles, Curate.

 It is not an easy living, but David supplements his income from farming by making chairs - greenwood chairs, fashioned from newly cut oak and ash and beech grown on his own woodland, turned on a pole lathe, assembled without screws or nails or glue, a tradition that goes back further than anyone can remember. My grandfather, from just over the border in Devon, sat on a chair which his father and grandfather had sat on, a Windsor chair with a wheel carved in the slat that eventually went to my cousin and is now sat on by the seventh generation to be thus accommodated. It is Lent, and I must confess I coveted that chair (I got a fold-over mahogany card table instead) and have always wanted one like it, but thought the skills that went into making such a wonderful piece of furniture were extinct. And then I heard about David Saltmarsh, looked at his website, and found the chair which I  hope will last at least the next seven generations. It is made from a single piece of oak, with pole-turned legs and stretchers, an ash seat, close-grained and carved for comfort, with a wheel cut into the central slat, and stands in my sitting room looking immensely inviting.