Rescue for eight ‘Friendless Churches’

Friends win funding for eight churches

Government cash will help preserve historic abandoned churches

With links to the leader of the Gunpowder Plot, St Mary’s Church in Buckinghamshire dates from the 13th Century, but hosts artefacts from a Norman font to a Georgian organ. It would have been converted to a house, had it not come into the care of Friends of Friendless Churches.

Now the charity has won £1.9 million to give the church a new roof and open access to its battlement-style tower, along with repairing seven other churches around England and Wales.

Funds will employ and train craftspeople, protecting the abandoned churches for future generations. Announcing the news, Friends of Friendless Churches director Rachel Morley said: “We are delighted to have been awarded a further £305,398 from the government’s Culture Recovery Fund, administered by Historic England, which will go towards the repair of five churches in England. And £25,417 from Cadw goes towards the repair of three churches in Wales. This money safeguards jobs, generates employment, and helps protect our irreplaceable built heritage. “It comes after we were awarded £1.54m from the Culture Recovery Fund programme for major repairs, our most sincere thanks go to Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Historic England.”

Here’s more on the churches set to be restored:

St Andrew’s, Bayvil, Pembrokeshire

In the hills of Pembrokeshire, overlooking the sweep of Cardigan Bay, this single cell church survives almost entirely as the Georgians left it.

The painted and panelled pulpit is so tall that it almost touches the ceiling with its sounding board, and its churchyard is a haven for wildflowers and birdlife,

St Mark’s, Brithdir, Gwynedd

Uniquely built in the Arts and Crafts Style, St Mark’s is a bold design of church in the heart of Snowdonia.

It is filled with carved characters on the pews of Spanish chestnut, coloured in Mediterreanean ochres as a tribute from Louisa Tooth to her husband Charles, founder of the Anglican church in Florence.

St Denis’s, East Hatley, Cambridgeshire

The church of St Denis has been used by the people of Hatley for 800 years and is still open. A Victorian restoration left the church festooned with brickwork and tiling, with chancel windows repaired to show what remains of 19th century stained glass.

St Mary Magdalene’s, Caldecote, Hertfordshire

St Mary Magdalen’s is worn and weather-beaten, almost looking as if it could crumble at a touch. But parts of it date from Norman times. A grand church in an abandoned village, it is thought the congregation abandoned the site in the 16th century, though carvings and graffiti date from later centuries.

St Mary’s, Hardmead, Buckinghamshire

The Friends of Friendless Churches took on ‘The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary’ in 1982, rescuing it from a house conversion. Much of the church dates from the 13th and 15th centuries, but traces of an older church are found in the porch, where fragments of a broken carved Norman font have been built into the walls.

This Grade I listed church will benefit from new roofs, new drainage, masonry repairs, and enhanced tower access, which will enable future maintenance.

St Lawrence’s, Gumfreston, Pembrokeshire

By ancient holy wells, the church of St Lawrence feels like a mediaeval redoubt, with its tall stone tower dating from the 12th century. Pilgrims are still drawn to the three curative holy wells, where nails are thrown after Easter Day in a custom called ‘Throwing Lent Away.’

St Mary’s, Long Crichel, Dorset

St Mary’s is both peculiar and picturesque. Set in to the chalkland of the Cranborne Chase area of natural beauty, a late medieval tower is combined with a nave, transept and apse built in stages between 1852 and 1875, filled with timber panel tracery. Nikolaus Pevsner described St Mary’s as ‘a Georgian space in Perpendicular form, long, uniform, well-lit – it might be a schoolroom.’

St Andrew’s, Wood Walton, Cambridgeshire

Its remoteness led to the church’s decline, but now it is a landmark for passengers just metres from the East Coast mainline. The church was recorded in the Domesday book and is filled with tributes to St Andrew. But the clay soils of the Fens, poor drainage and poor works from the Victorians present a huge challenge to the restorers, as the structure is moving. Funds will help the Friends monitor subsidence and limit the shifting of the building.