Service Times
- 8am Holy Communion
- 10.00am Sung Eucharist
- 6.00pm Evensong
- Plus daily services
St Peters is a church within
the Anglo-Catholic tradition
that believes in a daily
communion service
The Church is open daily
for private prayer
between 9am and 5pm
Click for service schedule
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Maintenance update (by Oliver Tims)
In the spring I wrote about the maintenance works that were being carried out at St Peters, some of the upcoming things we needed to think about, and a couple of other plans. Time for an update.
Some big works have been achieved, notably the clearing and redecoration of the boiler room and the installation of a new boiler for the church. It was decided that the hall boiler, which is currently functioning satisfactorily, should be looked at when improvements to the hall are made (of which more later); the savings that would be made by doing both at once were insignificant. The church boiler cost £7,500, which included flushing out the system and installing new controllers. It’s much more efficient, so should cut our fuel bills considerably.
Some of the cleaning and decoration of the boiler room was carried out by a team of probationers on the ‘community payback’ scheme, and cost us only the trouble of making a sandwich for one of them. The probationers also helped to renew the rotten fence posts around the road frontage, which Gerry and Roy have been working on. The loose tiles on the nave roof have been secured.
By the time you read this Nick will have got rid of the buddleia growing out of the roof over the vestry, extended the ramp into the church hall across the width of the opening and installed a hand rail up the left-hand wall, considerably easing disabled access. Inside, the 48 new chairs have arrived and the old ones sent to St Christopher’s, Hinchley Wood. By the end of October we will have two new tables to go with them. The £2,000 cost of this furniture was met by separate fundraising and contributions and a council grant, so has not drawn on the church’s finances at all.
There are some works still to do, such as extending lighting to the top of the church tower and inspecting areas of suspected woodworm infestation (although the signs of woodworm in the altar highlighted by the Quinquennial report are actually drawing-pin holes!). Nick is going to finish off the works to the drainage and rainwater goods by removing the old concrete from the gully around the north side of the tower and filling it with pea shingle, which will be perfectly adequate since water does not collect there. The much-needed cleaning of the windows inside the church will be carried out as part of next year’s spring clean.
We are keen to buy some portable staging which can be erected in front of the altar rail for Sunday School presentations, school events and concerts. Father Peter has found some collapsible (hopefully not when anyone’s standing on it!) staging which can be discreetly stored on top of the cupboards by the West door. It costs about £1,800, which will be raised through a separate appeal; we already have £700 towards this.
Next year we’ll be addressing the two major projects that really need doing (although we can start the initial groundwork now): repairing the North aisle gable end and reconfiguring the facilities in the church hall to provide lavatories accessible by disabled users. Because St Peter’s is listed, we need permission to proceed with work to the gable end. We won’t be allowed our preferred – cheaper – option of removing the coping stones, extending the tiled roof over the edge of the gable and installing wooden barge boards. We are still awaiting guidance from the diocese before putting the job out to tender.
Reconfiguring the hall’s lavatories should be straightforward, and we should be able to get grants to cover some of the estimated £2,000–£4,000 costs. But a recent suggestion is to extend the kitchen at the same time, which could be done by building along towards the boiler-room opening to create a wider area with more room for proper cooking facilities and less chance of collisions. A new serving hatch could be made where the small window is currently, to the left of the kitchen door. The re-tarmacing of the area outside that window is therefore on hold until we have decided what our plans should be.
We propose to contract one builder to do the work on the roof, the lavatories and the possible kitchen extension in the summer of 2010. We’ll carry out a feasibility study in the spring to look into this in more detail. We also suggest employing a building project manager on a part-time basis to co-ordinate and oversee the works; this shouldn’t be too expensive and will save time and money by avoiding inefficiencies and overruns.
As ever, we are indebted to Roy, Nick, Gerry and Chris for their continued hard work and expertise. They have saved us a great amount of money and stress, and we are hugely grateful to them.
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