Berkshire Historic Churches Trust
Annual Report for 2021-2
GRANTS
We gave three grants in 2021/22, to a total of £18,000, one for a floor, one for a heating system and one for windows. For the first time in several years none was for a roof – though this does not mean, unfortunately, that every church roof in Berkshire is now secure, for we have already made one offer and we know that there is at least one more application imminent!
Our largest grant was to All Saints, Boyne Hill in Maidenhead towards the cost of restoring the Victorian tiled floor. The church is an outstanding work by one of the leading nineteenth-century church architects, G E Street. The original floor of specially designed tiles was beginning to crumble and had become a hazard. It needed to be completely relaid, with broken and damaged tiles replaced, but the specialist nature of the work made it an expensive project. We were glad to be able to help. The church is active in the local community, hosting many events besides regular services of worship, and a safe floor is obviously essential if it is to continue and expand its work. We gave £10,000 towards a total project cost of £242,378.
The heating grant was to St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church, Maidenhead , to replace three old boilers (two already defunct and one on its last legs), and to renew the heating system generally to make it more efficient and environmentally sound. This church too has an active community role. We gave £5,000 towards a project cost of £85,264.
The third grant was to St Mary, East Ilsley . We had promised £10,000 towards an ambitious restoration programme encompassing work to the roof, windows and stonework. The church had struggled to raise the funds required for the whole project, but the work to the windows was urgent, and we agreed to release a part of the grant to enable this to go ahead. Our grant of £3,000 was paid through The Good Exchange so that it attracted match funding from the Greenham Common Trust.
New applications were few and far between this year. We offered a major grant to All Saints, Wokingham , for their ambitious ‘Space for All’ project, encompassing a major reordering, a new floor with underfloor heating, repairs to stonework and redecoration, and improvements including a servery and toilet, to equip the church to fulfil its potential as a civic church and community space. Smaller grants were offered to St James, Eastbury , for the renewal of the roof on the south side, and to St Mary, Great Shefford , to assist with investigative work into dry rot in the tower.
Whilst the number of grants paid and offered might have fallen from the year before, this is sadly not an indication that all is well with our churches (and it is not just roofs that are the problem), but rather a clear sign that the financial situation in which churches find themselves is extremely difficult. We know of a number of cases where action is required and where projects are under consideration, demonstrating a continuing need for repair and improvement, but where work cannot start because of the financial position of the church. We also know of the vital role that churches play in our communities. To continue that work they need buildings that are warm, welcoming and weathertight: our role, whether through grants, advice or encouragement, is to help them to achieve that.
EVENTS
After the enforced inactivity of 2020/21 we were at least able to arrange our annual meeting and church tour, though the Englefield Lecture was again a casualty of Covid. A full report of the annual meeting appears [below]. Ride and Stride did take place, and in spite of reduced participation raised nearly £25,000, a significant increase on the previous year and a most encouraging performance in financial terms if not in engagement. A full report appears [on page xxx].
PEOPLE
During the year we welcomed a number of new faces to the Trust, and, with regret, said farewell to others.
Most notably, we said both farewell and welcome to Erica Harman. Erica was the Trust’s first chairman, a role she fulfilled with huge energy and commitment, working tirelessly to establish the Trust and devoting her considerable skills to promoting its work. Its success owes much to her leadership, and all of us involved in the Trust today stand in her debt. However, after more than thirty years as a trustee (and for most of those as chairman) she felt the time had come to retire, a decision we accepted, though with great regret. Happily, she accepted nomination as a Vice-President: we welcomed her in her new role and are delighted that her connection with the Trust will continue.
We also welcomed the Rt Rev Geoffrey Scott, Abbot of Douai and a distinguished scholar and historian of Roman Catholicism, as a Vice-President, and Graham Barker, Vice Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire, and Jonathan Welfare as trustees.
There were several changes to the Executive Committee. Guy Cole left us on his appointment as Team Rector of Leominster in the diocese of Hereford, and John Edwards on his retirement from active ministry. We welcomed the Rev Carol Dunk as representative for the Bracknell area in succession to Guy, and Michelle Martin, a churchwarden at Leckhampstead, both of whom will bring valuable experience to our work. We also welcomed Christine Walker, who joined the Ride and Stride sub-committee as representative for the Wokingham area.
PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT
The challenges facing our churches today are enormous, and in the face of this we were prompted to sit down and reconsider how we, as a small trust with limited funds, could help to make a difference. Without a doubt, the best way to really make a difference would be to raise more money to give in grants, but for this we will need to increase substantially the number of our supporters and donors. To this end, with a view to raising the profile of the trust, we have set up a small sub-committee to look at events and communications. In February we published the first issue of what we hope will become a regular newsletter, and at the year’s end we had plans not only for a revived Englefield Lecture (in abeyance during the pandemic), but also two further events that we hope will attract interest and support. But we also want to work with churches and with the diocese to help churches embarking on conservation or development projects, and we have set up a separate sub-committee to review and make recommendations on ways to provide appropriate help and advice. Meanwhile, our need to promote Ride and Stride and increase engagement is as great as ever, and the standing Ride and Stride sub-committee continues to meet regularly to discuss ways of achieving this.
All this takes time and energy, and commitment from the small team of people involved, but we are optimistic that even in the present challenging circumstances we can make a difference – and we are determined to do so.
Annual Meeting and Church Tour 2021
Our 2021 annual meeting and church tour took us, on a lovely early-autumn afternoon, to four churches in east Berkshire. After missing out in 2020, on account of Covid restrictions, it was a delight once again to visit some of Berkshire’s wonderful churches, including, this year, two to which we have recently given grants.
We began the afternoon at Holy Trinity, Cookham. Here we had supported work on the tower, and the first thing to catch our eyes as we entered the church was a display of photographs, eloquently illustrating both the need for the repair and the quality of the finished work. The tower is now safe again, and will be for many years to come.
After a brief report by our chairman on the past year, Michael Johnson, a former churchwarden, treated us to a short history of the church. There has been a church in Cookham since before the Norman conquest, and many people have passed through its doors in the intervening millennium. Some of these are commemorated in the fine brasses and monuments to be found in the church, which Michael pointed out to us, and which happily we had time after his talk to explore and admire more closely.
From Cookham we made our way to All Saints, Bisham, another Thames-side church with a long history, where we were met and welcomed by Sheila Featherstone-Clark. Bisham is widely renowned for its monuments to members of the Hoby and Vansittart-Neale families, and Sheila spoke about the background to these in a brief but wide-ranging introductory talk. Our members were glad of the opportunity to study and admire these; some of us were also interested in seeing the smart new toilet that we had helped fund. The toilet is cunningly fitted into an old boiler room; what is not apparent is that, because the church is on low-lying ground by the river, the drain had to run uphill – an added complication! Now this facility is helping the church realise its ambition to become truly a building for all.
After Bisham we drove to St James the Less, Stubbings. Stubbings, once in the parish of Cookham Dean (but some distance from the parish church) is even today a tiny hamlet, and was even smaller when the church was built 170 years ago. It was paid for by Henry Skrine, the Lord of the Manor (one of whose sons was the first incumbent) and was built to designs by R C Carpenter, a noted architect of the early gothic revival. It is remarkably little altered. Roger Strike, the church’s historian, gave us a short introductory talk. As we looked round afterwards, churchwarden Sue Harrington Hill drew back the curtain behind the altar to reveal the most marvellous glazed wall tiles. The sight drew gasps of amazement from the group of visitors.
Our last church was St John the Baptist, Cookham Dean. Here, after admiring the magnificent view from the churchyard across the Thames Valley, we went into the Jubilee vestry for a splendid tea, before moving into the church itself. This church was also designed by Carpenter, and has been described as ‘an epitome of the Camdenian ideal of the small village church, of “unpretending but solemn character”’. In the church, our secretary, John Pritchard, spoke about the revolution in church design that occurred in the
early nineteenth century, and of the role that the Cambridge Camden Society played in bringing this about, thus valuably placing St John’s in its historical context and explaining its significance in the gothic revival movement.
We finished the day, as usual, with a service of evensong, where we gave thanks for our heritage of historic churches and for the work of the Trust in helping to preserve them, and prayed for blessing on our future endeavours.
At all the churches we visited we were met with great warmth, and we extend out thanks to those who gave up their Saturday afternoons to welcome us and introduce us to their building.
BERKSHIRE HISTORIC CHURCHES TRUST FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
Income and Expenditure Account for the year ended 31 March 2022
| Income Note £ Voluntary Sources Donations 7,000 Legacies - Gift aid for current year 541 Church Membership 2,260 Fundraising Income Ride & Stride 1 15,340 Lecture 4 - Fund Raising Events other (teas etc) 5 114 Trading Income Christmas Card Sales 3 Other Income Bank compensation 50 Interest 49 United Trust Bank 310 CCLA 15 Total Income Expenditure Direct Charitable Expenditure Grants to Churches 2 Fundraising Expenses Ride & Stride 1 Lecture 4 Trading Expenses Expenses re Christmas Cards Administration Printing, Postage & Administration Examination of Accounts Annual Report & Leaflets Total Expenditure BALANCE CARRIED FORWARD Balance Sheet as at 31 March 2021 Assets Yorkshire Bank Current account Savings account Ride & Stride account CCLA COIF Charities Deposit Fund United Trust Bank Not yet received from Cards for Good Causes Yorkshire Bank WREN account (Restricted) General Fund Balance at 1 April 2020 Deficit/Surplus for year Balance at 31 March 2021 |
2022 £ 9,801 15,454 717 424 26,396 18,000 240 - 133 218 - 238 18,829 7,567 2022 £ 26,664 48,509 1,515 32,742 35,206 289 1 144,926 137,359 7,567 144,926 |
£ 3,555 1,000 515 2,670 11,739 - - 80 49 401 38 |
2021 £ 7,740 11,739 1,192 568 21,239 29,500 100 - 470 . 284 - 142 30,496 (9,257) 2021 £ 19,587 48,461 1,190 32,727 34,896 497 1 137,359 146,616 (9,257) 137,359 |
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Examiner's report
We have examined the books and records and confirm that these accounts reflect the transactions for the year
BERKSHIRE HISTORIC CHURCHES TRUST NOTES TO THE INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT
| 2022 £ Note 1- Ride & Stride The major fundraising event during the year was the sponsored Ride & Stride. This raised: Gross Funds (without Gift Aid) 20,811 Gift Aid 4,452 25,263 less repayments to Churches 9,923 15,340 less expenses 240 15,100 Note 2- Grants to Churches during year to 31 March 2022 2022 £ St James, Leckhampstead - All Saints, Farnborough - Emmanuel Church, Woodley - St Peter's, Woolhampton - St Swithin, Coombe - St Michael's, Lambourn - All Saints, Wokingham - St Mary's, Fawley - All Saint's, East Garston - St Joseph's, Maidenhead 5,000 All Saint's Boyne Hill 10,000 St Mary's East Illsley 3,000 18,000 Grant funds offered but not paid at 31 March 2022 St Mary's,East Ilsley 7,000 St Joseph's, Maidenhead - All Saints' Wokingham 10,000 St Mary's Great Shefford 500 St James' Eastbury 5,000 All Saints, Boyne Hill - 22,500 Note 3 Trading profits from sale of Christmas cards Total Receipts 717 Less purchases 133 584 No account has been taken of the value of stock in hand at 31 March 2022 which is of negligble value The stock held in 2021 was estimated to be £500. Note 4 Lecture Total Receipts - Less expenses - - Note 5 Other Fundraising Sale of wine 20 Outing teas 94 114 |
2021 £ 15,408 2,575 17,981 6,242 11,739 100 11,639 2021 £ 2,000 2,000 5,000 10,000 1,000 1,500 1,000 2,000 5,000 - - 29,500 10,000 5,000 - - - 10,000 25,000 1,192 470 722 - - - - 55 55 |
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St James, Leckhampstead All Saints, Farnborough Emmanuel Church, Woodley St Peter's, Woolhampton St Swithin, Coombe St Michael's, Lambourn All Saints, Wokingham St Mary's, Fawley All Saint's, East Garston St Joseph's, Maidenhead All Saint's Boyne Hill St Mary's East Illsley Grant funds offered but not paid at 31 March 2022 St Mary's,East Ilsley St Joseph's, Maidenhead All Saints' Wokingham St Mary's Great Shefford St James' Eastbury All Saints, Boyne Hill Note 3 Trading profits from sale of Christmas cards |
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Total Receipts Less purchases No account has been taken of the value of stock in hand at 31 March 2022 which is of negligble value The stock held in 2021 was estimated to be £500. Note 4 Lecture Total Receipts Less expenses Note 5 Other Fundraising Sale of wine Outing teas |
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