PARISH CHURCHES? how do we keep our - Ecclesiological Society

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HOW DO WE KEEP OUR PARISH CHURCHES? • CHURCH BUILDINGS AND THEIR CARERS 25 Dioceses with highest % of churches hi-graded Dioceses with highest density of hi-graded churches Lowest % Lowest Map 2.1 Ranking of dioceses by percentage of their church buildings which are highly graded Map 2.2 Ranking of dioceses by highly-graded churches per square mile Map 2.1 ranks dioceses according to the percentage of their church Map 2.2 ranks dioceses according to number per square mile of buildings which are highly-graded (Grades I, II*, A, B) church buildings which are highly-graded (Grades I, II*, A, B) Source: Appendix F Sources: Appendix F; Church Statistics 2001, Table 1 Maps 2.1 (left) and 2.2 (right) Both these maps divide the 43 dioceses into four groups, omitting Sodor and Man (not comparable with the others) and Carlisle, Liverpool and Wakefield (information not available, shown with question marks). The right hand map includes more urban dioceses: although they tend to have a smaller proportion of listed buildings than rural dioceses, their concentration on the ground means that there are more per square mile. (Map software by kind permission of the CoE.) Notes 1. Ian Loe, Campaign for Real Ale, personal communication. 2. Rate of rural post of#ce closure from Postwatch Annual Report 2002–3, available at ; support package for rural post of#ces announced 2 Dec 2002 (DTI website ). 3. For Methodists closure and Anglican church planting, see George Lings & Stuart Murray, Church Planting: Past, Present and Future (Grove Books, Cambridge, 2003, ISBN 1851745246), pages 7 and 8. For church closures and openings, see Section 2.3 above. 4. Nineteenth-century count from Appendix 2 of The Preservation of our Churches, and see also Robert Currie et al., Churches and Churchgoers (Oxford, 1997), pages 213–6. Listed church buildings count from Appendix F, below. Number of listed buildings owned by National Trust and English Heritage, personal communication; the number is hard to obtain precisely, because many of their listed buildings are part of larger complexes. 5. For under-listing, see Appendix B. 6. For use of redundant buildings, see Appendix D, below. For sale proceeds, see note 15 below. For #nancial position of dioceses, see the Church Times, 25 July 2003 and other items listed in the Bibliography. 7. For this paragraph, see Appendix G. 8. A survey of 1994 suggests that the #gure was somewhat higher than this, standing at that date at perhaps 17 people for the 3,600 rural communities with fewer than 400 inhabitants, and rising to an average of 22 for the 6,000 communities with fewer than 900 inhabitants. Some of the difference is accounted for by the drop in attendance between 1994 and 1998. See Appendix E for the 1994 survey, but note that some of the communities included in those churches with an average attendance of 22 may be ‘commuter rural’ areas, shown as a different category in Table 2.4. 9. Brierley, Tide, Table 31. 10. See Brierley, Religious Trends, 2, 8.4 and 8.5. 11. Findlay, Protection of our English Churches, pages 53, 110. 12. Church Commissioners, personal communication. 13. Peterborough, Setting God’s People Free, page 12; Jackson, Hope for the Church, page 110. 14. English Tourism Council, The Heritage Monitor, 1999, page 24. 15. Financing the Churches Conservation Trust, Appendix 1, page 11. 16. Currie et al., Churches and Churchgoers (Oxford, 1997), pages 214, 216. The 1851 census counted 2.5 million attendees (adults, children and Sunday scholars) at morning service. To subtract Sunday School children, I obtained Sunday School membership from Gill, The Myth of the Empty Church, Table 6 and then took account of typical rates of attendance at Sunday School (page 24), concluding that the 1851 #gure for attendance should be reduced by six or seven hundred thousand Sunday School attendees to obtain a #gure for adult and child attendance. For the broad reliability of the census, see Gill, passim. 17. See Bibliography for diocesan reports. 18. English Church Attendance Survey, 1998, as reported in Brierley, Tide, Table 10, some #gures corrected (personal communication). 19. For dates of location of churches see e.g. Richard Morris, Churches in the Landscape (1989), page 147; see also his ‘The church in the countryside’, pages 51–3, in Della Hooke (ed.), Medieval Villages (Oxford, 1985). For Victorian building see Currie et al., Churches and Churchgoers, pages 213–6, and the Bibliography, below. For walking one mile to church, see Alasdair Crockett, ‘Variations in churchgoing rates in England in 1851’ (University of Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History, number 36 (August 2000)), available at .
26 3. Keeping church buildings in good repair 3.1 Spending on parish churches What is the current position? Despite the pressures described in the previous section, large sums of money are being raised by these voluntary groups (congregations) to keep their church buildings in good repair. In each of the four years up to 2001, expenditure on repairs has been running at an average of about £82m per year (in 2001 money), an average expenditure of about £5,000 per church building per year. On top of this is the cost of routine maintenance (insurance, heating, small repairs, etc.), about another £16m per year. 1 Is this average #gure of £5,000 per year enough? How much ought to be spent? Are churches being maintained in good condition? Or are future problems being stored up? To understand properly whether churches were being adequately maintained, we would need three pieces of information (see diagram ‘The repairs pipeline’): • the rate at which new deterioration will be occurring and new needs discovered; • a snapshot of the current state of the churches – their outstanding repairs; • the rate at which repairs are carried out. Anecdotal evidence about the second of these, the current state of churches, is not in short supply (see box), and suggests that the majority of church buildings are in reasonable or good condition. A systematic view is much harder to obtain. The national Buildings at Risk register does not normally include churches still in use, so there is no central source of information about listed church buildings with major problems. All the information I could #nd is discussed in Appendix A. My best estimate – an informed guess, really – is that 50% of listed churches – some 6000 buildings – ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE ON THE CONDITION OF CHURCHES An experienced archdeacon (north of England).Inmy experience, churches have never been in such good condition as they are now. Student of rural churches, carrying out a systematic survey, visiting many hundreds each year. The condition of churches is generally good. Structurally I have come across only a few that are closed as being dangerous buildings. That doesn’t mean to say they don’t have problems if you look closely, but very few are actually falling to bits. Frequent visitor to churches, in the South-East and elsewhere, both for purposes of study and with professional responsibilities. The basic condition seems #ne. However, cosmetically they could be better. Many need a bit of tender loving care. Trustee of a county Churches Trust, the county containing hundreds of rural churches. Churches in this county are in much better condition than twenty years ago. I would say that only about one in #fty of them give cause for real anxiety. Sources: personal communications In the diocese of Chelmsford, which surveyed its parishes in 2003 (see Section 5.3), 85% of churches were said by churchwardens to be ‘in good condition’. Source: Chelmsford, Review In the diocese of Manchester in the mid 1990s, 21% of churches were said to be ‘needing attention’ and 9% in ‘poor’ condition. Source: see Appendix A
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Page 5 and 6: 4 TREVOR COOPER • HOW DO WE KEEP
Page 7 and 8: 6 THE BISHOP OF LONDON • BUILDING
Page 9 and 10: 8 THE BISHOP OF LONDON • BUILDING
Page 11 and 12: 10 DR SIMON THURLEY, CHIEF EXECUTIV
Page 13 and 14: 12 DR SIMON THURLEY, CHIEF EXECUTIV
Page 15 and 16: PEOPLE’S MINDS MAY DIFFER, AND SO
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Page 45 and 46: 44 5. Case studies: three dioceses
Page 59 and 60: 58 7.Andso...? Purpose of this sect

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