St Hilda's Church
Collective Worship at St Hilda's Church
Within school we have a daily act of Collective Worship. We attend church to celebrate Harvest, Christingle, our Carol Service and Easter as well as to perform our nativity and Year 6 Leavers' Service and Year 6 Leavers' Play. Parents and carers are invited to join us for these special services.
The Licensing of Father Simon Sayer CMP
The Licensing Service for Father Simon Sayer CMP was held on 23rd April 2026 by the Bishop of Beverley, The Feast of St George as Parish Priest of St Hilda's Church Prestwich.
The Story of St Hilda
St Hilda is generally represented with a pastoral staff and carrying an abbey church. Often, there are ammonites at her feet. Legend tells of a plague of snakes which St. Hilda turned to stone supposedly explaining the presence of ammonite fossils on the shore at Whitby.
Hilda was born in 614 and was a princess of the Deiran family. She led a quiet life until at the age of thirty-three when she decided that she loved God so much that she became a nun. She had planned to leave England to enter a convent in France where her sister was already a nun, to live an exile for our Lord’s sake so that she might then more easily pray for all people. But Hilda was persuaded to join an English convent near her home in Northumbria. Very soon she was chosen to become abbess of the nearby double-monastery of Hartlepool, a religious community of monks and nuns living separately in adjoining convents. Later, she served as abbess of another double monastery that eventually became known as Whitby.
Hilda was a passionate student of scripture and her goodness and wisdom became known outside the monastery as a woman of great energy, who was a skilled manager and teacher, inspiring many to turn away from sin and wrongdoing. Towards the end of her life, she suffered from a lasting illness and a continuous high fever but in spite of her pain she focused on offering thanksgiving to God until her death.
St Hilda is the Patron Saint of our church and school and we especially pray for her on November 17 each year.