A survey of 2017

CJL Designs carried out the complete repair of all the cracked panes of glass in the church in August 2017

 

Tideway

• Balanced the care and conservation of the building from Tideway’s early works to the preparatory main works programme.
• Involved in the negotiation of the APA and coordinated work on window repairs rather than the initially proposed double-glazing.
• Coordinated all safeguarding measures and baseline monitoring of the building, in preparation for the main Tideway works including organ survey, interior and plasterwork survey, noise/vibration control and monitoring.
• Appointed an external structural engineer to support on-going work.

 

Thank you to all our supporters for the grants we received this year for our roof and fabric repairs

 

 

Fundraising

• Awarded grants from the following organisations (Marshall Charity, All Churches Trust, National Churches Trust). Grants will go towards repairing the South East roof and associated water ingress issues.
• Fundraising initiatives and proposals developed for the larger redevelopment grant. No applications were made, as more consultation was required from the PCC and congregation on the proposed scheme.

 

New postcards now available at the church

 

Community Engagement

• Church Development Blog developed and updated to inform local community and partners of on-going work. 34 posts/ 1000 visitors.
• Created and maintained Twitter account @SPDDeveProj – 307x tweets and Followers 108x
• Partnership building with local community groups and inquiries related to the church and activities associated.
•  Community engagement initiatives through producing interpretive church material (leaflet, postcards, social media).

Fr. Paul and S. Paul’s Project Officer carrying out a site visit to St George’s Bloomsbury to hear more about their redevelopment project

 

Development

• Implement measures for the future sustainability of the Grade I listed church.
• Involved with the Lewisham Council improvement works to the church entrance including improved paving, artist-designed railings for the tomb, new noticeboard, tree works and engraved text on the pavement.
• Involved with proposed design schemes for Crossfield site and churchyard wall proposals.
• Carried out an extensive review of similar church redevelopment projects and produced a benchmarking and analysis report in order to inform and direct the SPD development project.

 

Organ Music at S. Paul’s 2017 – 2018

Acanthus leaves and a new church entrance

For those who have passed S. Paul’s recently, you may have noticed that we have had a bit of facelift to the main entrance adjoining Deptford Highstreet and the churchyard. This is thanks to work undertaken by Lewisham Council & Project Centre.

The paving has been beautifully relaid and helps create a better connection between the church and surrounding area. A new noticeboard will be reinstated, providing up to date information on the church times and activities.

The sarcophagus,  located to the side of the entrance will also be enhanced, with a new artist-designed railing and interpretation.

The railings are currently in production and have been inspired by the interior architecture of the church, namely the Acanthus leaves which are associated with the Corinthian order of columns. The work is currently underway and images below show some of this work by Heather Burrell. 

 

Project Centre Design Sketch of Church Entrance

 

 

Art designed railings currently in production

Beautifully Crafted Acanthus Leaves for the Sarcophagus railings

 

 

From here to there…

This is the title for our Church Development Project that will be taken forward later this year.

We want to ensure our church mission can be sustained into the future. In order to do this we must seek new ways of delivering. Our plan is to redesign & reuse existing spaces to generate income for the church and open more possibilities for community engagement.

We are inviting our congregation to a series of two consultation meetings in November and December to help us define our plan. Watch this space for more information.

 

Tideway Enabling Works

The majority of the enabling activities, essentially work to prepare the site for the main works that will commence next year, began in June and will continue till November 2017.

Who’s in charge of these? CVBJV (Costain, Vinci Construction Grands Projects, Bachy Soletanche Joint Venture) While these works are underway we are working with Tideway/CVB to reduce the noise and vibration impacts on S. Paul’s. This will be through controls and mitigation measures.

The enabling works are as follows:

• Highway works and installation of one-way system
• Construction of temporary site access/exit
• Site Boundary Hoarding
• Site Clearance
• Archaeological Investigations
• Install drainage system and ducting

Working hours are Monday to Friday 08:00 – 18:00 Saturday 08:00 – 13:00 and maintenance works consisting of low impact activities such as refuelling, moving site fences, cleaning activities and vehicle repairs on Sundays between 10:00 – 16:00.

Prior to commencement of enabling works at the Deptford Crossfield Site, baseline noise and vibration monitoring will be carried out, along with a full survey of the church carried out by Alan Baxter.

 

August Update – Improvement Works

From the 31st July until mid October (approx. 12 weeks) the church forecourt will be undergoing improvement works. These are part of Lewisham Council’s wider Deptford high street redevelopment and Project Centre are the design team leading on these works. The following works were submitted and approved by church faculty including: re-paving in Yorkstone, re-planting and alterations to church boundary walls, new church noticeboard, and new signage and artistic metalwork railing around sarcophagus.

The other major works that will be taking place in August, are church window repairs. These extensive repair works to all the current broken panes of glass, are the positive results of our on-going monitoring and mitigation work with Tideway who are funding this. The works will be carried out by CJL Designs who are a highly skilled and qualified glazier company, having worked on similar church restoration projects.

An interior survey was carried out by Hirst Conservation, in 2015 and 2016 which highlights cracking and plasterwork issues in the North East corner of the church as a result of North East tiled roof and exterior masonry where there is water penetration and which is damaging the internal plasterwork. A series of grant applications have been made and we are pleased to announce that we have been successful in two, namely, The All Churches Trust and Marshall’s Charity, in order to carry out these urgent repair works within the next two years. We are now awaiting news from our grant application to the Garfield Weston and later National Churches Trust.

Additionally the ceiling in the SW stairwell has now been fully restored and repaired!

 

From here, to there

“Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly”.

– Plato

How and why have we come to this decision to redevelop S. Paul’s?

Part of the reason we need an action plan to take forward and redevelop the church is partly because Tideway Tunnel decided to come to Deptford.  After much negotiating, an agreement was reached between Tideway and the church, to allow for building monitoring and to provide some resources for the long-term goal to see the church facilities more broadly developed for the future.

While a Heritage Lottery Fund Project was carried which was structural and heritage led between, 1999 – 2005 there was no forward plan on completion of the works and no revenue funding or staff. We are now at the point at which this needs to be addressed in order to conserve this Grade I listed building.

In order to facilitate the mission of this church, money and resources need to be available to manage and maintain the church building and churchyard to contribute to the Diocesan Parish Support Fund, which will provide us with a Parish Priest and to employ person/s for the administration and facilities management.

S. Paul’s is the only Grade I listed building in the Borough of Lewisham. According to the Diocese of Southwark Poverty Briefing 2016 report, S Paul’s is the 2nd poorest parish. On average the weekly running costs of the building are £1000 and we are struggling with these financial demands.

It is our aspiration to cover all costs for the church including ministry and repairs, which would be approx. £200,000 per annum to be able to meet costs. These are the figures that S. Paul’s requires in order to secure its future.

The recent work carried out was to analyse the data collected as a result of visiting a number of London churches. The churches selected were of a similar history, background and context to S. Paul’s and have all recently completed their redevelopment projects.

The churches visited during the period March-May 2017 include:

1. St George’s Bloomsbury
2. St George the Martyr, Borough
3. St George’s Cathedral, Southwark
4. St James’ West Hampstead
5. St John’s at Hackney
6. St Mary’s Islington
7. St Martins-in-the-field
8. St Patrick’s Soho

What was concluded from these eight church examples? Firstly, it was clear that many began as building repair projects, which were remodelled into a larger plan. Ideally, the project plan can be identified, measured and defined in order to succeed. However, in all these cases, they were somewhat more organic and flexible in this approach. Therefore building a plan which can accommodate changes to funding in the form of a Plan A, B or C scenario would be advisable. Taking what you can from these frameworks to fit with S. Paul’s in order to define a right-sized approach to ensure that the project is delivered on-time, on budget, and in-scope, and meet an acceptable level of quality.

Keep it relevant! This applies to the community in which the church serves. First and foremost, keeping worship at the centre and mission of the church. Secondly, while it is impossible to serve all desired outcomes for the church, it is still paramount that all options are identified and addressed.

Decision-making comes from the core team. This will drive the project and keep it on track. In order to build an actionable project management plan, a project team must be on board and maintained throughout.

Taking a view of the “big picture” approach, which focuses on the project outcomes, not processes will help in defining the overall project success. While, at the same time keeping a “worse-case scenario” project plan to ensure that if sufficient funding is not secured, then there will still be a correlation between the overall satisfaction.

GOING FORWARD…

We know we are setting a bold agenda, but we believe this is all possible but in order for this to happen there will be hard work involved. So now is the time.

So therefore, here are some key questions that arise for S. Paul’s:

How much money do we need to do this?

We need an income of at least £200,000 per annum. This equates to £3400 per week and £500 per day.

Who’s going to do this?

We need a group of people to support us as well as external advice from structural and heritage people.

What are we doing to do?

Bearing in mind that the main business of the church is service and prayer, we need to reconfigure the spaces of the church to allow for improves access, facilities and income generation. This will include building hire of interior space, crypt improvement works (café/offices/community hall) and employ 1-2 part-time staff to operate the building.

How will we raise this money?

We shall seek funding from HLF or other charitable organisation to allow for these improvement works.

Next Step?

By the end of the year, we would like to have finalised our design/development plan for the church by consulting with the church community, through two consultation and working meeting days. This final plan for the church will then form the basis of our action plan to take forward in 2018.

Surveying the Churchyard Wall

The Master Plan aims to create a large new area of public space between Deptford Church Street and Deptford High Street, to the south of the churchyard. We are now in discussion with Tideway and Lewisham Council who have been awarded S106 funding. This funding will look at new ways to integrate this plan with the church and provide a sense of openness to the area.

The church is keen for these plans to be sensitive to the mission and aims of the church life and fundamentally to retain the primary purpose of the churchyard, which is a place of tranquility, contemplation and safe space for all to enjoy.

There has been little research carried out in the past on the churchyard wall and limited amount of records and archives to provide a concise historical account. This survey is arguably the most up to date and thorough analysis that will help provide a full assessment of the significance of this structure including; architectural interest, historic interest, group value, social value, former uses and local distinctiveness.

The historical value placed on the wall is its association with Thomas Archer, who was one of the foremost architects of his time and S. Paul’s is notably one of the finest Baroque churches in London. The wall has long been part of the communal life of the area and is a boundary between the public realm and the sacred burial ground.

The church is built of Portland Stone, whereas the churchyard wall is built of brick – the bricklayer employed at the time of construction was a Deptford man, Thomas Lucas. The Rectory that once existed, but was demolished in 1889, was also built of brick. The churchyard wall was a requirement stipulated upon the Church Commission, who laid down that all new churches built by the Commission must be provided with a burial ground, which in turn, must be enclosed by a stone wall with iron gates.

The Rocque map of 1745 shows that the original burial ground was located at the east end of the Church, where the original church walls enclosed this site.

The 1835 painting shows the church from Deptford High Street, situated behind the entrance gates that once fronted the pavement. The boundary between the churchyard and Church Street was uneven due to the Baptist Chapel situated at the east end and described in the diary of John Evelyn as ‘a wonderful concourse of people at the Dissenter’s Meeting House in this parish [Deptford] and the parish church left exceedingly thin’. The Baptist Church which adjoined the east wall of the church was demolished in the late 1960s.

The wall suffered some bomb damage during the Second World War. However, although there were many repairs carried out to the wall over the past, much of the footprint is original.

Much of the wall would remain unaltered until the demolition of the Rectory and later with the 1910 Act of Parliament which permitted church grounds to become public open spaces. S.Paul’s was one of the first churches in the country to act in this initiative and the gravestones were cleared, and arranged around the churchyard walls and tree planting commenced in the 1890s. The churchyard was officially opened on 12^th June 1913 by the Lord Mayor of Deptford, Alderman Schultz.

More recent changes include: demolition of two sections of churchyard wall in 1995; the formation of a temporary opening in the church wall in 1999; the creation of a new pedestrian and vehicular access to Crossfield Street; the erection of iron railings to the wall on the north in 2004 and the construction of two new buttresses to support a section of the south boundary wall in 2011.

The churchyard wall could certainly do with conserving and structurally securing areas of that have become fragile and decayed. While there are other areas that could do with improving for security measures. Further updates will be made in due course!

SPD April Update – Appointment of Structural Engineer

We are very pleased to announce the appointment of Sinclair Johnston to support us with our project at S. Paul’s Deptford. This post came as a result of a meeting held in October 2016 with Tideway Tunnel, Historic England, The Diocese of Southwark, S. Paul’s Deptford Parish Church Council and our church architect. It is crucial that S. Paul’s is monitored and assessed by a professional such as Sinclair who has a vast amount of experience working on similar projects. The post has been arranged through Tideway and is a very positive outcome to provide the support we need in this next phase. Over the next coming months, we will work with Sinclair and Tideway to establish a clear programme of building monitoring for the church.

Interestingly, another similar project that Sinclair worked on was at St Patrick’s Soho, which was affected by Crossrail Tunnel. St Patrick’s successfully excavated and created a new basement level for the church in order to provide a community centre, office space and kitchens, which specifically caters for a homeless shelter. As a result of appointing Sinclair, we have been introduced to this project and have now met with Fr Alexander from St Patrick’s. This relationship and others we are building with partner churches, we believe, is crucial for developing a network of support and advice that can be built into our own project.

 

New Year update – Churchyard and Deptford Highstreet

Already there has been momentum with developments at S. Paul’s, including talks with Lewisham Council over regeneration plans of the High Street and also with Tideway in terms of the final design and landscaping of Crossfield Street site once the works have finished.

Churchyard and Deptford highstreet

Following the works that Lewisham Council carried out on the south end of Deptford high Street there are plans to now continue this along the North end. TFL are funding this scheme to deliver these works and consultants from Project Centre Ltd have been developing the designs.

Most of the designs include encouraging more pedestrianised roads, upgrading paving, improving controlled parking and linking to the historic character of the street. As part of these works the entrance area to the churchyard, also known as the piazza, is part of these discussions. The proposals, subject to permission, are to link the high street more closely to the piazza by replacing the paving and bollards. At the same time introducing a new noticeboard to replace the current one, which is now quite tired and in need of upgrading. The tomb which is in some state of neglect and is of historical significance, will also benefit with some interpretation and upgraded railings. The dating of the tomb requires further research, as previous inscriptions date it to the Roman period but it is more likely to be Saxon. An earlier granite block (possibly with some decorated markings and/or quarry marks) is placed on top of a much later grave (the inscribed slab is probably 18^th century). For further information on the council plans and developments see their website:

http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/inmyarea/regeneration/deptford/deptford-centre/Pages/Deptford-High-Street-north-end.aspx

Interestingly, the whole question on the visual appearance of the piazza and how it should be designed, brings up questions on both a practical and historical level. From a practical side, S. Paul’s has had on-going issues with the public using the churchyard as a thoroughfare or parking site. Those parking in the churchyard must have a prior appointment with the church or be visiting it to worship. Therefore any design changes to bollards or opening up the street must account for this issue, so as not to encourage use by vehicles but at the same time encourage more people to visit and enjoy the churchyard and setting. We are hoping that the new design will enable more people to visit the church and see it from the high street, this will certainly be helped by improving the noticeboard and including a newly commissioned engraved paving stone with details relating to the church.

A view of the churchyard from the 18th century to the present day highlights how it has changed in the past three centuries, but also how the original Georgian design was very simple, open and generally less cluttered then it is today – including having less trees in order to make more emphasis on the church building itself.

1735 view of S. Paul’s Deptford – open plan churchyard

1835 view of S. Paul’s Deptford – notice how the churchyard links more closely with the highstreet and how tombstones are now in place

1897 early photograph of S. Paul’s Deptford – churchyard is now almost full with tombstones

S. Paul’s Deptford 1959 – tombstones have now been cleared to the side and church resembling its former 18th century appearance

The vision would be to reinstate the original designs and openness that the early churchyard achieved, which would make it more accessible to ongoing pedestrians. At the same time encouraging all people to enjoy and respect the tranquility of this place of worship.