Diocese of Chichester

Chichester Cathedral, St Mary’s Horsham, St Mary’s Kemp Town, St Peter’s Brighton and Christ Church St Leonard’s share in part of a £13m Heritage Stimulus Fund designed to support organisations in England from across the heritage ecosystem that have suffered severe loss of income because of Covid-19. This particular fund was only open to major parish churches.

Horsham St Mary’s, the 13th Century town centre landmark has been awarded a £9,865 Heritage Stimulus Grant to pay for urgent repairs to the building’s boiler house roof.

Lisa Barnett, Vicar of St Mary’s, said: “We feel blessed to have received this amount to fix the roof of our boiler house.

“As with many in our society, our income has been severely impacted by Covid closures this year. We are hugely fortunate to have a large congregation that has supported our wonderful building financially, and our covid appeal over the summer raised almost £50k but the months ahead will remain challenging for us financially. While we are delighted with this award our prayers remain with those who continue to suffer as a result of the global pandemic.”

Christ Church is an imposing, Grade II* listed building in the centre of St Leonard's. Over the decades, the church has been known for the dignity and beauty of its worship, marking the lives of many and inspiring numerous vocations. The church has received £89k to repair its tower and spire.

Bishop Peter Wheatley, Priest-in-Charge, said: 'This is a wonderful start to our £600k programme to restore Christ Church in time for our 150th anniversary in 2025. The building is especially vulnerable to the salt winds off the sea, but we are determined to restore it for the benefit of the community for another 150 years.'

St Peter’s, Brighton received a grant award of £245k. Vicar, Archie Coates, said: “We will use these funds to clean the remainder of the Tower, make emergency repairs to make it all safe and hence remove the scaffolding. Project plans are being finalised, but we currently expect the scaffolding to be removed sometime after Easter 2021.

“Removing the scaffolding after so many years feels like a huge leap forward for our mission – with the Valley Gardens project coming to completion and St Peter’s as “the jewel in the crown”.

“It’s important to highlight that the full restoration of the Tower won’t be complete – we expect to continue this restoration incrementally in the years to come – but in future we will apply for funds to tackle discrete restoration projects … a pinnacle, a clock face, etc … and put up much more limited scaffolding which is appropriate to the task.”

St Mary’s in Kemp Town, Brighton was awarded £53k to carry out urgent repairs to the east side of the church.

Fr Andrew Woodward, Vicar of St Mary’s, said: “We were delighted to get this funding. We will be using the grant to repair the eroded brick and stonework and fix the low roofs and guttering on the side of the church that overlooks St Mary's Place. We're hopeful that, come next Spring, it will no longer rain inside the church!”

The church was previously awarded £10,900 to plan and design Covid-secure toilet and kitchen facilities and improve accessibility in the church.

Chichester Cathedral also receives a second grant from the fund. In early October it received £297k and in this latest award it received over £149k which will be for the repair of a flat roof to an area intended for conversion to lavatories.

The Dean of Chichester, The Very Reverend Stephen Waine, said:“We are incredibly grateful to the Heritage Fund and Historic England. These funds will support the Cathedral and its community on our journey of recovery.”

This round of funding was restricted to Cathedrals and Major Parish Churches only. The funding was for major capital works. It comes from the Heritage Stimulus Fund which is a part of the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund that is being administered by Historic England.

Dr Katherine Prior is the Diocesan Funding Adviser. She can be contacted via email