Cold Ash St. Mark's celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2015.
Cold Ash, together with Ashmore Green, form a rural parish north of Thatcham. Construction of St.Mark's church commenced in 1864 and it was consecrated the following year. The first wedding at St.Mark's took place in 1866.
A church school was built in 1873 and in 1894 the parish split from Thatcham. The church was central to the village for much of the twentieth century; in 1998 it saw an extension added to provide facilities to the community. In 1903 there were around 800 villagers; today, there are nearly 3800 residents. The church continues to play its part in the lives of many of its parishioners.
St.Mark's celebrated its 150th anniversary with a weekend of events focussing on St.Mark's Day, 25 April 2015.
There's more information on the history of the church and the village on the village websiteColdAsh.org.uk and the church's website StMarksChurchColdAsh.org.uk.
To find the cache you will need to look at the brown wooden noticeboard at the front of the churchyard. Examine the engraving at the top of the board and make a note of the number of occurrences of each letter. For example. Q=0 (there are no letter Qs in the engraving; it's as easy as that!).
The cache can be found at :
Latitude 51° (Q+2)(Q+5).(A+C+E)(10-U)(AxC)' North
Longitude 1° (Q+1)(Q+5).(AxS)(Q+U)(L+D+H) West.
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You will need to bring your own pen. Please watch out for traffic, muggles, wild animals and curious locals!
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For full information on how you can expand the Church Micro series by sadexploration please read the Place your own Church Micro page before you contact him at churchmicro@gmail.com.
See also the Church Micro Statistics and Home pages for further information about the series.
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