St. Oswald's to celebrate Harvest Festival

Episcopalians with family and community ties to St. Oswald’s Church will return to the historic house of worship Sunday, Sept. 30, for the annual Harvest Festival.

Services begin at 11 a.m. and will be followed by a potluck dinner. The Rev. Lawrence Lewis, former priest at St. Oswald’s, will serve as celebrant during the Eucharist. All visitors are welcome.

For many years, the church served as a community and religious center for a group of English-born farmers who settled in Atchison County in the early 1870's.

Descendants of those families still own much of the surrounding land.

In 1997, St. Oswald’s became part of the Sacred Hills Regional Ministry along with two other Episcopal churches, St. Mary’s in Savannah and St. Paul’s in Maryville.

Located in southeast Atchison County, St. Oswald's-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church was built in 1892 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. The church began celebrating its Harvest Festival "homecoming" in 1897.

According to National Register documentation, St. Oswald's is architecturally significant as an intact, largely unaltered example of the "shingle style" and as one of the few remaining examples of the work of English-born Kansas City architect Arthur H. James.

Architectural hallmarks of St. Oswald's include varied roof pitches and shapes, exterior wooden shingles and neo-Gothic windows.

The building was modeled after the founding families’ home church in England — St. Oswald’s in Grasmere, a village located in the scenic Lake District in the northern part of the country. Many churches in that region are dedicated to Oswald, a seventh century king of what was then called Northumbria.

Noted for promoting the spread of Christianity across what is now the north of England and southeastern Scotland, Oswald was killed in the Battle of Maserfield. He was associated with several miracles and widely venerated as a saint throughout the Middle Ages.

To reach St. Oswald's from Maryville, drive 19 miles west on Highway 46 then four miles south on Route EE.