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Winter 2025 UpdateWe are very pleased to announce that the structural repairs and tower roof replacement at the church are now completed. This marks the end of the first phase of the planned restoration work. THANK YOU all for your support in helping us get to this point and for your patience whilst the church has not been open during the week. We plan to re-commence opening to visitors five days per week from 8 December (every day except Tuesdays and Thursdays), services permitting. Opening hours at least between 10am and 3pm in the winter months. We are very grateful to all who have supported us in our fundraising and to the following bodies for the grants awarded: Withernwick Wind Farm Community FundYorkshire Historic Churches TrustBenefact TrustOur appeal continues with the aim of installing toilet and kitchen facilities and replacing the nave roof. We hope you will continue to support us so that our church can remain open and viable as a real community space, as well as a place of worship for years to come. THANK YOU ALL AGAIN.Summer 2025 UpdateWe are delighted to tell you that work has commenced on the church, beginning on 14 July 2025. The scheduled work in this first phase will include addressing the issues with the porch by strengthening and underpinning the foundations, partially rebuilding, and inserting helibars to tie the structure to the main building; re-roofing the tower and repairing the pinnacles; and various structural repairs around the building. Work is expected to take around ten weeks.Please note that the church will remain open for Sunday services but will not be open daily for visitors and private prayer for the duration of the works. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.We are hugely thankful to all who have supported us to make this possible and for small grants from Withernwick Wind Farm Community Fund, The Benefact Trust and Yorkshire Historic Churches Trust. We also received a small foundation grant from the National Churches Trust towards the cost of the initial measured surveys, though we were unsuccessful in our applications to their Large Grants programme for help with the repairs. The above work marks the first phase of our planned restoration and re-ordering works; our fundraising will continue towards the next phase(s) which aim to install a toilet and servery area, with improvements to the heating and lighting, and replacement of the nave roof. Your ongoing support in this will be very much appreciated. Grants UpdateSpring 2025: Again, unfortunately, our application to the National Churches Trust was not successful, due to demand exceeding the supply of funds available.Autumn 2024: Unfortunately our applications to the National Churches Trust and Congregational & General Trust were not successful in the Spring. However, the National Churches Trust said our application was 'high scoring' but there was simply not enough money to meet the demand; we were encouraged to try again and a further application has now been submitted.Spring 2024: We are delighted to announce that we have recently been awarded a grant of £3,900 from The Benefact Trust (received) and £8,000 from The Yorkshire Historic Churches Trust (to be paid on completion of the essential repairs project). We are immensely grateful to the support received from these two bodies. This brings the total of grants awarded so far since we launched our campaign to £19,400, including earlier awards of: £250 from the Withernwick Wind Farm Community Chest for an asbestos survey£2,250 from the National Churches Trust Foundation Grant Scheme towards the cost of measured surveys£5,000 from the Withernwick Wind Farm Community Fund towards the repairs projectWe await the outcome of further applications to the National Churches Trust Large Grants Scheme and the Congregational & General Trust. Your ongoing support is also vital to our project and we thank you for being with us on this journey.Report of Public Meeting held in St Swithin's Church on Wednesday 8 November 2023 at 7pmThank you to all who came and supported our Public Meeting about the Restoration Appeal on 8 November. We are grateful for your continuing support and for the fundraising suggestions put forward. We will try to keep you informed of our progress with the plans as put forward at our meeting. We would still love to hear from anyone with further fundraising ideas and if you are able to get involved please contact any one of the Restoration Fund Committee members listed below on this page. As reported at the meeting, our priorities are now the porch and other structural repairs around the building, and replacement of the tower roof covering and repair of the pinnacles. We propose to apply to the National Churches Trust under their Large Grants Scheme early next year to help with this. We have already secured a small grant from the Withernwick Wind Farm Community Fund but there will still be a shortfall in our funding so your help is still needed. Our aim continues to be to keep the church open, safe and accessible and then to improve the facilities so that we can make the building a real community space, whilst retaining its primary purpose as a place of worship. Please continue to support us. Thank you.
You can help us with this by donating through our Just Giving page: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/savestswithinssproatleyTHANK YOU!
