Redundant churches put to better uses

Press, 5 July 1978, Page 27

Redundant churches put to better uses

By

PETER MILLAR

in

London for NZPA

The man in the checked cloth cap pauses by the entrance to St John's Church, folds his newspaper, and walks thoughtfully up the aisle to a wooden counter where he places some silver coins: a bet on the 3.5 p.m. race at Newmarket. For St John’s Church, Edinburgh, is a betting shop. In the past 10 years it has also been a perfume factory and a furniture shop. It is but one striking example of alternative uses of Britain's redundant churches. Nine years ago the Church of England acknowledged the problem of dwindling congregations and empty churches by setting up the Advisory Board for Redundant Churches. Since then, 699 Anglican churches have been declared redundant. Without regular care

the churches fall into disrepair or attract vandals: stained-glass windows are broken and altars desecrated. Rather than let God’s property suffer such a fate, some 170 churches have been demolished. But almost as many have been preserved as an essential part of the nation’s cultural and architectural heritage and more than 250 have been converted to secular use, preserving buildings whose character has become an intrinsic part of the locality. In Oxford High Street, widely considered one of the world’s most beautiful thoroughfares, the imposing eighteenth century Church of St Martin and All Saints has been declared redundant. So has the rustic St Peter’s-in-the-East, dating from the twelfth century and tucked away from the city bustle of undergraduates and car workers

in a gas-lit alley frequented only by cyclists and lost American ' tourists. But both these buildings have benefited from their position in a historic city where space is at a premium: they have been taken over respectively by the adjoining Oxford University colleges of Lincoln and St Edmund Hall as libraries. Britain has too many churches for a population that is using them less and less. Since the Middle Ages, and especially in Victorian times, churches have been built all over the country. Now the population movement away from country villages and overcrowded inner cities has left fine old buildings unused, while the growing suburbs occasionally find that churches there have too little room for their congregations. The problem is also one

of disenchantment with the established Church. Dr Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark, London, estimates that in the 10 years to 1974 church attendance in Britain has slumped by 20 per cent.

One senior church warden felt that this paradoxically was the result of the Anglican Church’s attempts to “come down” to the level of the common man. By cutting down on ritual and pomp the Church was losing the mystery that drew people to it, he said. But if attendance a t Anglican churches is decreasing other religions may benefit indirectly. In Bedford, a group of Indian Sikhs awaits a decision as to whether it may take over a disused Anglican church for Sikh worship. The decision to declare a church redundant comes from the body responsible for running it: the local

parish council. The Redundnat Church Advisory Board then considers suggestions for other uses, taking into account local feeling and the “suitability” of the intended conversion.

The conversion of St John's in Edinburgh into a betting shop is, in fact, a matter of some embarrassment to the Church of Scotland, which says that it has now imposed restrictions to prevent a repetition. Some conversions, however, receive a speedy blessing. The Church of the Holy Trinity in south London, a huge edifice of ostentatious Victorian Christianity, has become a rehearsal room for London's orchestras, a use which has allowed it to remain largely unaltered. St Mary’s of Lambeth, on the banks of the Thames beside the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterubry, will

be converted into a museum in honour of the seventheenth century gardener and naturalist, John Tradescant, who is buried in its grounds. The most common conversion of churches, especially in the country, is into living accommodation. The grand ones can become elegant blocks of flats and the smaller ones unusual country cottages. In times of rising property prices and expensive mortgages disused churches can be a considerable bargain for young couples and if the building requires large sums to be spent on structural alteration and repair, at least it allows scope for individuality and imaginative decoration. But then not all prospective home-buyers are keen to have a garden full of tombstones and corpses.