£1m boost for 16 historic Norfolk churches
Sixteen historic Norfolk churches have received a £1m boost for urgent roof repairs as part of the first round of historic UK places of worship to benefit from a funding package of £30m, through the Listed Places of Worship: Roof Repair Fund.
A total of 502 places of worship will receive between £10,000 to £100,000 to meet the costs of urgent repairs to roofs and rainwater disposal systems. Money is also being provided for structural investigations; specialist reports and bat surveys.
Welcoming the news, the Ven Jan McFarlane, Archdeacon of Norwich, told the EDP: “We are delighted to have received these grants for the repair of our church roofs. In many of our villages, the church is the last community building to remain open, and the cost of keeping the roof wind and weather proof is often too great for the relatively small number of people who live there.
“We very much want to keep our churches open as spaces for the community to use as well as for worship, and want to be able to hand them down to the next generation, so these grants will go some way to helping us do that.”
The grants have been awarded through the Government-funded Listed Places of Worship: Roof Repair Fund. The fund was launched by the Chancellor in his Autumn Statement in December 2015 with a budget of £15m. In his 2015 Budget speech the Chancellor announced a further commitment of £40m to the Fund.
Norfolk churches which have received grants totalling £986,000 are:
All Saints Church, Litcham - £99,000
St Mary the Virgin, Great Plumstead - £56,000
St. Peter, Church Road, Swainsthorpe - £56,300
The Parish Church of Houghton St Giles -£16,700
St Mary the Virgin, Snettisham - £96,400
Holy Trinity Church, Spooner Row, Wymondham - £22,500
St Andrew's, North Pickenham - £17,700
St Peter's Church, Corpusty - £98,300
St. Martin's Church Fincham - £28,500
All Saints, South Lynn - £20,900
Church of St Peter, Matlaske - £57,900
Church of All Saints, Great Melton - £100,000
Church of St Clement, Burnham Overy - £100,000
All Saints' Church, Mundesley - £76,200
All Saints, Little Melton - £43,400
All Saints' Church, Thornham - £97,000
Grants announced account for £30 million of the allocated funding. The Fund will reopen to new applications later this year and successful applicants will be announced in 2016. All those who were unsuccessful in today’s first round of awards will be able to reapply.
The Fund is administered by the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) on behalf of the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS).
www.lpowroof.org.uk
Picture above is St Mary’s Snettisham. Picture courtesy of Simon Knott