Visit from Sir Gavin Williamson MP

We wrote to our local MP, Sir Gavin Williamson, to seek his support regarding the concerns we had about the new limit for claims being introduced to the Listed Places of Worship Grants Scheme in 2025/26. This scheme exists to support Listed places of worship, churches, mosques or Synagogues to recover the VAT on repairs and conservation work. The delivery phase of our own conservation programme includes a significant grant from this scheme so we wanted to share our concerns with our MP. Sir Gavin asked to visit the church and we had the pleasure of showing him around in February.

Sir Gavin was impressed by the history of the church and the work we have done to date to restore and improve the facilities. He also supported our desire to work more with our local community to make the church building more of a shared space and to encourage school visits, tours and improving access to the building and its heritage both physically through increased opening time and virtually through this website. He was kind enough to take our concerns to the Department for Culture Media and Sport and while they were unable to provide any assurance that the Listed Places of Worship Scheme might be amended, we felt at least we had raised the point and been listened to.

Thanks to Sir Gavin and his secretary Ryan Hillback for arranging the visit.

Gift of an Inventory of the Church

The Church Recorders, a group of historians with a love of old churches, have been documenting the contents and history of the church over the past two to three years. It is a painstaking task which draws on the experience and knowledge of all in the team. The result is a beautiful bound book containing an accurate and detailed record of all the contents of the church illustrated photographically. We were delighted to receive this book at a church service and to have it blessed by the Reverend Viv Starkie.

We are looking at ways of sharing this wonderful resource digitally on this website and in an accessible form in the church. Our thanks go to all the Church Recorders who have given their time to capturing All Saints just as we start our conservation work. Thanks to Bill Cottiss for the photographs on the day and many of those in the book.

High Tech Scanning of Graves

Commonwealth War Grave of H Lockley of the Royal Artillery

As part of our National Lottery Heritage Project we are having the burials and graves in our churchyard scanned and recorded digitally. In a pack carried by the technician, the scanner records and photographs each grave to allow those seeking the graves of relatives to access an image alongside the details records we have already created and mapped over the past few years. Once cross referred to our index and maps, this information will be available to search on-line on this website or via an index in the church porch for those just visiting for a look around. We are most grateful to Graham Clay, a member of our Heritage Committee for his painstaking recording of the thousands of burials in the churchyard, his wonderful drawings and maps and his attention to detail in the creation of the index. Graham and his colleague David answer many queries via the enquiry form on this website about family burials and that service will still be available.