You will be aware that work has, at last, started on the church. This follows a year long Development phase during which the architect & engineer prepared drawings & specifications which were then put out to tender. We received the go ahead from HLF in September & we have now appointed Eastern Foundry Lead Ltd to undertake the works, which are expected to take 6 months.<\/p>\n
The first phase is to construct a scaffolding platform to allow safe access at eaves level & to build a temporary roof to allow work to progress through the winter & provide protection to the interior of the church. There is already a scaffold platform across the nave, which is also temporarily propping the roof during the works.<\/p>\n
Now this is completed the contractor will strip back the roof coverings at eaves level so that a thorough survey can be made of the condition of the roof rafter ends where they meet the external walls. During our initial inspection of a sample number of rafters, a year ago, we discovered that the rafter ends had rotted away & were largely detached from the wall plate on which they were sitting. Over the last year we have been working with the architect to design a number of options for repairing or renewing the rafter ends in oak & reseating them on a new wall plate, but we will not know the final extent of this work until a detailed survey is completed.<\/p>\n
We have appointed an architect, structural engineer, cost consultant & ecologist to guide us through the project. The architect, Nicholas Warns Associates, specialises in the refurbishment of ancient buildings & worked on the recent restoration of Stow Bedon church. The ecologist is a ‘batman’. The church is home to a number of bats, which are a protected species, & we are required by law & the terms of our grant to ensure that we keep any disturbance to their habitat to the minimum. Although not ideal from a works point of view, we are taking advantage of the winter hibernation period to carry out the major part of the works.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately the scale of the repair works is such that we have had to remove the cost of electrical works & new heating but we continue to seek new sources of funding, & we are very grateful for all those who have already, very kindly, made donations. We will need at least another \u00a325,000 to enable us to reinstate the electrical works.<\/p>\n
The PCC is very aware that the graveyard must be respected at all times by the contractors during the works. Eastern Foundry & their sub-contractors are aware of their responsibilities but please let Katharine (01953.483.318) or Henry (01953.488.911) know if you have any concerns & we will raise these with the contractor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You will be aware that work has, at last, started on the church. This follows a year long Development phase during which the architect & engineer prepared drawings & specifications which were then put out to tender. We received the go ahead from HLF in September & we have now appointed Eastern Foundry Lead Ltd…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmartinsthompson.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmartinsthompson.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmartinsthompson.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmartinsthompson.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmartinsthompson.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=220"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmartinsthompson.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmartinsthompson.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions\/223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmartinsthompson.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmartinsthompson.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmartinsthompson.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmartinsthompson.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}