Grade I and Grade II award-winning reordering for PCCs. Recognised by the DAC Awards Scheme in 2019 and 2020, for St. Mary Magdalene at Hullavington and St. Michael and All Angels at Highworth. Faculty, contract and construction handled for parishes who have never commissioned building work before.
A parish committee is not a developer and should not be treated like one. Decisions get taken at meetings, funds arrive in stages and the building has to stay in use. The programme is built around all three rather than in spite of them.
Statements of need and significance, DAC consultation, public notice and the faculty petition itself. It is a slow and specific process and it goes far better when the person building the scheme already knows what the DAC will ask for.
Lifting and relaying stone floors, underfloor heating in a building with no insulation and enormous thermal mass, and the level access that makes a church usable by everyone. Careful archaeology where the ground below is disturbed.
Pews taken out with the timber recorded and kept, reused for the new furniture or new flooring where the scheme allows. It is a sensitive subject in most parishes and it is handled as one.
The practical additions that turn a building used once a week into one used every day, designed to sit quietly in a historic interior and to be removable in the future without leaving a scar.
Services continue, funerals happen at short notice and the church stays weathertight throughout. Phasing, dust control and safe separation of a live construction site from a public building are planned in from the start.
A faculty is the permission from the diocesan chancellor that a church needs before it can be altered, and it works alongside listed building consent rather than instead of it. The DAC advises, the parish gives public notice, and the chancellor decides. For a reordering of any scale, allow six to twelve months from the first DAC meeting to a granted faculty, longer if the scheme is contentious or the building is Grade I. The way to shorten it is a well prepared statement of need, not a rushed one.
You take the decisions and you hold the money. Everything else can sit with us: the programme, the trades, the site safety, the DAC and the architect liaison, the certificates and the reporting back to the PCC in language a committee can act on. Most of the parishes we work with have one nominated contact who deals with us, and that is enough.
Usually yes, and it is normally a requirement rather than a preference. The work gets phased so a usable, heated and safe part of the building remains available for services, with proper dust screening and a clear separation between the site and the public area. Occasions that cannot move, a funeral above all, get planned around.
Most are a mix of parish reserves, appeals and grant funding, and grant money almost never all arrives at once. Schemes can be designed and built in phases so that each phase leaves the building complete and usable, which also makes a stronger grant application than an all-or-nothing scheme.
The DAC Awards Scheme recognised our work at St. Mary Magdalene, Hullavington in 2019 and at St. Michael and All Angels, Highworth in 2020. Both were reordering schemes in listed churches, and the awards recognise quality of work and the sensitivity of the intervention rather than scale.
Pew removal is one of the most scrutinised parts of any reordering, and the answer depends on the quality and date of the pews and the strength of the case for the space. What helps is a scheme that records what is removed, reuses the timber where it can, and demonstrates a genuine need rather than a preference. We have taken schemes like this through the process and know how the argument has to be made.
Somerset, Devon, Wiltshire and Dorset, with the towns and villages in between covered as a matter of course. Work further afield in the South West is taken on where the project suits us and we can give it the attention it needs.
Every project starts with a conversation, long before it starts on site.