Prayers for Preservation
Tony Aldous looks into the recently founded Historic Chapels Trust.
What is the link between the Farfield Meeting House and Todmorden Unitarian Chapel in Yorkshire, Walpole in Suffolk and the Baptist church at Cote in Oxfordshire? They are all no longer in regular use as places of worship, are all Grade I or Grade ll listed buildings; and all may now be free of the threat of decay and dereliction thanks to the recently founded Historic Chapels Trust, which has, in principle, reached agreement with their owners to acquire and care for them.
The Trust, which was launched last summer with a supportive speech and a £20,000 grant from Heritage Secretary Peter Brooke, aims to do for redundant non-Anglican places of worship what the longer established Redundant Churches Fund does for out-of-use Church of England churches. The Trust director, Jennifer Freeman, believes that the numbers of deserving cases (which could include synagogues or, for that matter, mosques or temples if any were of Grade I and II quality) is of the same order as the 300 churches the RCF now cares for.
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