CRACK-ON
The newsletter of St. Andrews Althorne, Community Project
No.7 February 2024 Peter Ingram 07854 217941
Well, we’ve done it!
Our National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) bid has been submitted. My first newsletter was dated November 2020, which stated our intention to seek a lottery grant to stabilise and bring our church back to the magnificent building that we all treasure so much.
It’s been a long time coming but the process is long and complicated in itself. In the first instance we had to try to understand what was actually causing the problems. We have been working with our structural engineers, The Morton Partnership, carrying out measured tests and surveys to discover what was actually going on below ground level.
It turns out that the clay that the church is built on is very elastic, which means that it accepts moisture and dries out very quickly, which has been exacerbated by long hot summers followed by very wet winters. When we have heavy rain, the water penetrates to a depth of approximately two meters, therefore any stabilisation work has to be deeper than that.
The next problem was, what to do about it. Initially we thought that we would only need to work on the eastern end of the building but it soon became apparent that the main structure of the building was also affected, we now have visible cracks affecting the south side of the building as well. It was first suggested that a trench be dug under the walls of the whole building except the tower, two and a half meters deep and filled with concrete. This proved to be an impossible task as the trench would have to be dug by hand and shored up as it progressed. I could not find a contractor even interested in this as it was considered too dangerous.
We were then advised that an alternative method of cantilever piling would be the best way of tackling the problem. This had a number of issues in itself, not least where the graves are positioned. This has been overcome and this is the solution we intend to use.
We have been very fortunate to have received help from a consultant, Sarah Odell who has worked with us on the application process and also our architect, Hilary Brightman who has helped us to get the necessary costs estimated in time. We were also fortunate that Historic England placed our church building on its “at risk” register as category A.
The HLHF process is complicated in itself. Firstly, we had to supply an “expression of interest”, this document detailed what we wanted to do, why and how much we thought it was all going to cost. The purpose of this document is to decide if our project fits within the rules of the fund. It is not uncommon for applicants to be turned down at this stage or told to amend their proposal. We were lucky, we got through at the first attempt and have been invited to make an application.
It has taken over six months for us to compile all the information required to make a bid, that has now been done and we should get a decision by mid-June, whether or not we are successful. If we are not, we will be told why and we can have another attempt in August. Fingers crossed!
A lot of work has gone into this and we will keep running events to help us cover the costs that we will incur outside of any grant that we may receive. I would like to thank everyone who has been involved in the application process and to everyone who has supported our events or made donations, it is very much appreciated.