Launch of Phase Three: Welcoming Spaces

We launched Phase Three of our new Church Care Project earlier in the year. The Welcoming Spaces initiative aims to improve our church buildings and continue the work that was undertaken previously by the All-Saints’ Repair and Care (ARC) initiative.

We have now completed two important elements, the Statement of Significance and Statement of Need. These two reports were needed before starting our master planning works to help define suitable improvements.

The Statement of Significance reviews the Church Building and comments on the historical significance of various features. The image on the left shows one of the eight gargoyles adorning the Cupola tower of 1862. The image on the right shows part of the Chancel Screen thought to be ‘moderate-high significance’ and ‘an excellent example of blacksmiths art, hand formed in a period fast being superseded by mass production’ from around 1834 (Oxford Heritage Partnership).

The Statement of Need discusses what improvements are required to support the Church community, for example the need to provide better access to the building, a new servery and many other improvements the Church want to make. There are also important fabric improvements required, remodelling the gullies around the tower end of the Church to remove internal damp.

We will be progressing the master planning works during the Autumn with our Specialist Architect Peter Preston and there will be more updates soon as we progress the project.