The United Benefice of Bradley, Church Eaton, Derrington and Haughton

• Bradley S.Mary and All Saints
• Church Eaton S.Editha
• Haughton S.Giles
• Derrington S.Matthew

Training Incumbent
The Revd Cath Brumfitt

Trained: Queens Foundation. Deaconed: 2017 Lichfield

I served my curacy in the Watershed benefice and became Rector of my current benefice in July 2020. In 2023 I was appointed as Rural Dean of Stafford. I am married with two adult daughters and two dogs. I come originally from Huddersfield but left there to join the RAF; after leaving the RAF I ran my own driving school.

Prior to ordination I was involved in running Sunday school, leading worship and arranging social events in my sending church. My introduction to faith was through singing in a traditional church choir as a child.

I am accepting of PLF. 

The context

We are four rural parishes within a radius of about eight miles. We work from a joint mission action plan and also have a joint social committee who organise several events in addition to the ones organised by each individual church. We have active PCCs and dedicated church wardens.

Our services consist of BCP, Common Worship and Iona communion services and CW evening prayer, compline, as well as our monthly contemporary Joyful Noise service. Weekday morning prayer is livestreamed on Facebook. We also have several weekday groups such as worship cafe, table talk and tinies tots and teddies, a weekly afterschool group and monthly coffee morning. There are two retired priests with PTO living in the benefice and two locally commissioned worship leaders.

There is a close relationship with both schools with clergy leading worship both in school and in church.

Each church has an open churchyard which are maintained predominantly by volunteers; last year Bradley church won the Diocese churchyard of the year award. We have good relationships with the villages and make use of the village halls for social events.

We are currently embarking on projects to improve the facilities in our churches. The congregations consist of predominantly retired people but we have had several younger families join recently and we have seen some encouraging growth in our worshiping communities. Two of our churches have very active bell ringing teams who ring for services and weddings. Recent highlights in our benefice have been a joint mission initiative during the Haughton Christmas lights, family BBQ with teddy bear zip line, flower festival, visiting choir concert, afternoon tea, and church clypping. One of our top highlights is our pop up nativity with Racket the donkey. We are a benefice who are increasingly working closely together to share our love of Jesus and are keen to look forwards and outwards in mission.

Mission statistics (2024)