BOURNVILLE PARISH CHURCH GETS SOUND SYSTEM UPGRADE

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BOURNVILLE PARISH CHURCH is located in the heart of Bournville, Birmingham, next to the famous Cadbury chocolate factory. Even though George Cadbury was a Quaker, he had always wanted an Anglican church to be built in his model village of Bournville. Land had been set aside for a church and church hall by the Bournville Village Trust in 1905 – the Trust having been founded in 1900 to administer and develop the village and its surroundings. The church building, designed by William Alexander Harvey, was consecrated in 1925. It has a Roman tile roof, with Lombardic eaves cornice and is in the Basilican style of a rounded-arch formation.

While the interior of the church is very pleasing on the eye the same could not be said of the sound reproduction from the loudspeaker system. With their extensive experience in the design of sound systems for places of worship, Richard King Systems were called in to explore the suitable improvement options. The brief was to produce a cost-effective solution that would both provide intelligible speech reproduction in the nave and chancel but at the same time not having a negative impact on the clean lines of church’s interior.

To assist the church in evaluating the suggested system design a temporary installation was undertaken with the selected model of loudspeaker. Following extensive listening assessments and faculty approval, an eight-cabinet system with bespoke brackets was installed to provide significant audio improvements while being visually very discrete.

In addition to the loudspeaker system, the microphone system has also been uprated to include high-quality radio and gooseneck microphones. q

• Visit Richard King Systems at CRE Midlands on Stand G25.