Historic Religious Building Alliance (HRBA) has launched a new report on ‘Sustaining historic churches: what does recent research tell us?’
… recent research reports directly bearing on the sustainability of historic churches…
Charlotte Dodgeon and HRBA writes:
This publication summarises a selection of recent research reports directly bearing on the sustainability of historic churches.
More research has been carried out on the sustainability of these buildings than any other type of heritage. This is not surprising: the many thousands of listed churches form a substantial proportion of the country’s built heritage, yet are cared for by volunteers whose purpose is worship, not heritage, and whose numbers are – on average – shrinking. These congregations have rightly been called ‘inadvertent custodians’. Given this, it is an important and challenging question how to organise matters so that these significant buildings have a secure future.
In practice, a good deal – though by no means all – of the research into the future of historic churches has looked at Church of England (CofE) buildings. This is not surprising given their dominance in number and grade of listing: about 12,000 CofE churches are listed, roughly two-thirds at the higher grades of listing (see page 5 for the Number of listed places of worship). Most of the remaining research has covered Great Britain or the United Kingdom. Rather little is dedicated to Scotland alone or Wales alone.
The reports presented here are all recent. They have been selected on the basis of their originality, interest and significance, and also to include a balance of topics. The focus is churches and chapels: cathedrals are out of scope, as is guidance on how to manage and develop a church building.
The choice of reports was difficult, as a great deal has been published since the turn of the century. In the event, a number of subjects are not covered: there is no report on tourism, or the need for investment to bring facilities up to date and make the buildings suitable for wider use, or the repurposing of buildings no longer used for routine worship. Those who wish to explore these topics, and a mass of other reports, are encouraged to browse the material curated on the HRBA website (see page 24)…
View the Report View the report
