The Canon Wray Sock Appeal is back for its third year and you can donate your socks right up until the official anniversary of this historic legacy on the 21 January.
If you are Christmas shopping in Manchester or attending a carol service why not add one extra pair of warm winter socks to the shopping list to support those finding themselves out on the streets as the temperatures continue to drop below freezing.
Look out for the Canon Wray Sock Box inside Manchester Cathedral where your donated socks will be collected and passed on to the Booth Centre. The Booth Centre offers people who find themselves on the streets this winter, the chance to come in out of the cold and eat a free healthy cooked breakfast and lunch in a sociable environment. It’s also an opportunity to have a shower and pick up dry clean socks and talk to trained staff and volunteers.
Cecil Daniel Wray was a very popular, if slightly eccentric, priest who died in 1866 having served at the Cathedral for an astonishing 56 years. Many pass his tomb outside the Cathedral unaware that Canon Wray, along with the better-known Joshua Brookes, baptised and married more people in England than any other clergyman on record. He set up ‘Canon Wray’s Birthday Gift’- a fund for the provision of socks for the poor – on the occasion of his birthday, 21 January, each year.
In recognition of this great character and his legacy, we will be trying to fill the Cathedral with a record number of donated socks and working with the Booth Centre charity to distribute these to the homeless. If you have received yet another pair at Christmas and your sock drawer spilleth over – get down to the Cathedral and help us to bring the legacy and spirit of one of Manchester’s great characters back to life.
