WE HAVE FINISHED THE PROJECT AND WE RE-OPENED THE CHURCH ON SUNDAY THE 28 JULY 2024
THE PROJECT’S HISTORY
St Jude’s Grade II listed church building was built in 1875 to provide a place of worship and to meet the changing needs of a rapidly developing Plymouth population. It served the local congregation well for almost 150 years as a church, but it was limited in its ability to serve current and future generations for anything other than Sunday worship.
Even then, St Jude’s thrived with these limitations as a faith community, enabling five to move into ordained ministry in the last 20 years, two families into full time overseas mission and has multiple congregation members involved in city and worldwide ministries who also run a free community cafe with attached walks every Tuesday morning to help with isolation and health.
But our Halls were becoming fully utilised in our community connections. We remained keen to work with and for our local community, but our buildings restricted us so much. That pilot project mentioned above, in partnership with our local GP’s, Councillors, Housing Association etc to help with isolation – St Jude’s Community Hub Cafe – grew quickly showing there was a need, but it was limited in its scope and rapidly running out of space – just a foretaste of partnership that could be available if we could fulfil the vision for this project.
We had been working on the project since the Autumn of 2006, gaining full Local Authority and Church planning permissions (called a Faculty). The project was site wide and the Church part was extensive. However, as it took so long to get final listed building permissions, circumstances came about that we couldn’t predict including changes to the way Charities and Trusts funded capital community projects that were different from when we began. The percentages we knew the project could potentially attract when we began, were now either much less or just no longer available for that more extensive project, and so it changed into what we now have.
The church congregation (then about 100 people), over and above their normal giving, initially donated almost £400,000 over five years, in addition to a similar sum from the sale of two buildings we owned. Roofs and the Tower were repaired, all the guttering and underground drainage replaced, driveways widened, the Church Cottage refurbished for potential future inclusion, electrical supplies replaced, glazing protected etc etc. But as we got ready to put in applications for the remaining funds, the changes to potential donors had happened.
Therefore, we reduced the scale of the work, trying to incorporate much of what was in the original, though now for a sum we hoped we could just go ahead with, without significant further fund raising. The project, along with all the prior work, will have been fulfilled predominantly by the giving of the Church congregation as our era’s gift to the ‘next era’ of the church and community. Below is a simple drawing of of the new church layout is. There were donations from various Trusts and Charities external to the Church of England that in addition amounted to about £100,000.
Then, following a last minute appeal to our Church family late in November 2023 as we discovered costs had risen with inflation yet further, on top of their prior gifts on c.£400,000 , with just two weeks notice, we received extra pledges to bridge the final gap in the project costs… £79,725!
We hope that, as with the grand stately homes and the history that is told through their various extensions and upgrades when they were living buildings, that folk will see the living history of this wonderful building through its many stages of life as it has served its community from one era, to the next, to the next. Its structure is being well preserved. The prior designs were very rigorously investigated through heritage groups and the listings process for permissions, as was this new reduced vision. The resulting new internal re-arrangement still honours the past, while presenting a series of flexible spaces for the whole community to be able to use, not just the church congregation.
PRIOR FACILITIES
We do have two church halls, each over 100 years old, whose facilities were restricted, though we also worked hard to improve them with new boilers, re-wiring etc and in 2018 spending some £20,000 on new ramps to ease access with fantastic help from several charities. We still managed to include providing around 90 under 18’s a safe space each week in the halls, as well as the Community Hub Cafe, but we were unable to offer the community the facilities it really needed until we changed the church. It is the largest potential space within the wider area that could only be used for church Sunday services. There were no toilets in the church (or drainage either!) so a short walk was needed to one of our halls. It had very inadequate heating (We had brought forward some additional heaters and new power supplies that were planned for the main original project that sadly now may not be needed) There were no catering facilities and difficult disabled access for some. It was a standard, pewed, badly lit, uneven floored, sometimes cold yet very welcoming Victorian church.
This project made the church a community asset 7 days a week.
MAJOR RENOVATION
Completed in the summer of 2024 you can see the changes in the video above.
And now its all done? St Jude’s are once again able to respond to the needs in its local area, both as a place of worship and as a functional, accessible building for the wider community, already hosting NHS Vaccination Clinics at varied times alongside the Community Hub Cafe.
The Church has transformed the traditional ‘church’ interior into a multi-functional, flexible, well-equipped set of varied spaces:
A simple servery
Up to date audio and visual facilities
New lighting and heating
Superfast Broadband & WiFi
A café / meeting area
Fully disabled accessible toilets
Two smaller spaces that on Sundays are for quiet prayer and a play space for any children with a glass wall to keep them connected to the worship – both of which can obviously do other things, such as a Book Club who meet here once a month during the Cafe.
There are wide and flat disabled access in all areas with internal raps to previously inaccessible areas.
THE FUTURE
In an area with very few facilities for the community, these major improvements will enable the church over time to help our community yet more.
We hope you’re as excited as we are about the future of St Jude’s within its community for the ‘next era’ of its life. If you want to find out any more, do feel free to contact us.