Church Re-ordering of 2023-24

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Plans to make some exciting changes to St Lawrence’s started in 2019.

The current building is beautiful and ideal for acts of worship. However, our aim is to make the church more than just a place of worship as we try to make ourselves closer to the whole community of Hungerford. The current layout of the building does not provide space for things like the parish lunches and small meetings or services and there are insufficient toilet and kitchen facilities.

The plan to meet these needs is to:

• Move the vestry upstairs in an area created by glazing between the church and the balcony behind the existing balcony rail
• Build a kitchen extension in the corner behind the tower using the existing space under the tower to provide two toilets.
• Partition off the area under the balcony (including the existing vestry), to provide flexible space for parish lunches, children’s church, ABC and meetings etc.
• This whole area would be heated using separate controls providing a warm space at reasonable cost.
• Outline plans for the proposal are listed below along with the statements of need and significance which we have to provide to get permission from the Church authorities to do the work (a faculty).

For more information see:

- St Lawrence's Church website - Building Plans

- The 75-page Statement of Significance, giving detailed historical, architectural information (May 2019).

The first stage of this re-ordering was the installation of new glass doors in the south porch in January 2023, funded by The Friends of St. Lawrence Church. 

In August 2023 the church was largely cleared of movable items in readiness for the building work to commence on 11th September 2023. There is a target date for completion on Easter Day 2024 (31st March).

Prior to the heavy equipment coming on site, the furnace for the underfloor MacClary Pipeless System, was buried in concrete. Splendid photos taken by James Wadham, recorded the old system, which dated from 1929 (Faculty 19 Aug 1929 BRO D/P 71/6/13/6) was . In 1962 the worn-out hot-air system of heating was replaced by an oil-fired system of hot-water radiators.

In October 2023 the floor timbers of the west end were checked and replaced where necessary. The foundations of the church pillars were checked:

The steels came in November 2023:

The whole project was virtually complete by April 2024.

View of the west end of the church on completion of the re-ordering

The whole project cost £810,000 which was raised by November 2024, about 14 months after fund-raising began. It was a result of some large donors (Greenham Trust, Benefact Trust, Oxford Diocese, Laing Trust, Berkshire Historic Churches Trust, Garfield Weston,, St Nicolas Church, Newbury and Englefield Trust) as well as generous donations and fund raising by church members and The Friends of St. Lawrence's Church.

Photo Gallery:

20230829 Church McClary Heater _20A0945 (Medium)

20230829 Church McClary Heater _20A0952 (Medium)

20230829 Church McClary Heater _20A0970 (Medium)

20230829 Church McClary Heater _20A0984 (Medium)

20230829 Church McClary Heater 17.26.25 (Medium)

20230829 Church McClary Heater 17.27.08 (Medium)

20230829 Church McClary Heater 17.38.39 (Medium)

20230829 Church McClary Heater 17.58.21 (Medium)

20230904 09.25.59 (Medium)

20230904 09.26.10 (Medium)

20230904 09.26.28 (Medium)

20240511 12.07.00 St Lawrence's re-ordering (Medium)

20240511 12.07.26 St Lawrence's re-ordering (Medium)

20240511 12.07.44 St Lawrence's re-ordering (Medium)

20240511 12.09.07 St Lawrence's re-ordering (Medium)

- The McClary Heating furnace (from 1929)

- Various views of the completed re-ordering project, 16th May 2024.

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