Spear's Wealth Management Survey

Who Lives Near a Church Like This?

Susannah Glynn wonders why philanthropists have not yet turned their attention to pretty but dilapidated parish churches, jewels of England’s heritage  
 
 
NEAR WHERE YOU live there will be a building you probably take for granted. It will stand as a local landmark, it’s anyone’s to enter and it will invariably reflect the history of the area — collectively these buildings embody 1,000 years of British history. It will also most likely be in need of some kind of extra funding. It is, of course, the parish church.

In the era of the Big Society, our church buildings — all 47,000 of them — are a huge potential resource. Naturally set at the heart of towns and villages, they are communal spaces open to all. They are also a reflection of our heritage, connected to families up and down the land and important places of spiritual calm. Yet these buildings are often low on the list when it comes to funding.

‘State funding for heritage in general in real terms has been steadily declining,’ explains Loyd Grossman (pictured left), who has long been a champion for our heritage and is chairman of both the Heritage Alliance and the Churches Conservation Trust (CCT). ‘While everyone was thrilled that state funding for the arts and museums was very generous, that disguised the fact that funding for heritage was declining year on year. All things considered, the government puts a relatively trivial amount into heritage.’

In fact, just 4 per cent of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s budget goes towards ‘architecture and history’. During the Comprehensive Spending review, heritage was hit by a 32 per cent reduction in funding — as opposed to the 25 per cent sector average — and by this stage the sector had faced £130 million in real-term cuts over thirteen years.

With 344 churches under its care, the CCT is responsible for the largest collection of historic churches in the country. As with similar organisations, the trust has had to face a serious shortfall in income since the financial crisis: the Comprehensive Spending Review saw a 20 per cent reduction in CCT funding from the DCMS, with a proportional loss of income from the Church Commissioners, the trust’s second biggest funders.

The charity requires a minimum of £9 million (£1.5 million per year for the next six years) to make up for its funding shortfall.

In today’s financial climate, any spending review and budget cut to the arts will invariably reopen the debate on private philanthropy. So it has been with the heritage sector. But with the focus primarily on the big, high-profile institutions, philanthropy in heritage — particularly on a small scale — can often be left out of the spotlight. In the case of village churches, many of the big hitters may live near a historic building in need of a patron, so why are these figures not getting involved in helping their local heritage?

‘To begin with, there is a low level of awareness which we have to work quite hard to address,’ says Grossman. ‘We know that two-thirds of all visitors say the principal reason they come here is for the history and heritage, and everyone who lives here is very aware that history and heritage make a deep contribution to their formative life. However, I think that many people tend to look at the historic environment and think that the National Trust or the government, or some other massive organisation, is looking after it, which is simply not the case.’

St Mary's, Redgrave after restoration
 
Former businessman Chris Knight has recently joined the development board of the CCT to help secure extra streams of funding, primarily from private philanthropy. ‘In the case of the CCT, the trust has lots of people who support it on the ground — in villages and in the areas in which a church is vested in the trust,’ he explains. ‘But it’s not so well known nationally. In many instances it really is as simple a matter as telling the story more widely.’

Knight also makes the point that people may not realise the relatively modest sums involved. ‘The level of philanthropy at the CCT varies widely. Sometimes a donor will get involved to save a stained glass or repair a monument — sometimes they will become regular funders for a series of buildings. In some instances — as at the Church of the Assumption in Hartwell, Buckinghamshire, where one donor stumped up £200,000 towards repair work, which included a new roof — donations are in the hundreds of thousands. But in general the amount of money is relatively small: in the thousands.’

The benefits of this kind of philanthropy are huge. The trust estimates that its repair programme and activities — which range from protecting Charles Dickens’s church and preserving rare 13th-century wall paintings to adapting a church for use as circus school — generates more than £15 million of direct local economic value, including skilled local jobs, spending by trust visitors at local businesses and money taken in from church events and used by local people on basic church maintenance.

‘These buildings reach way beyond the obvious groups — family-connected, faith, heritage,’ says Crispin Truman, chief executive of the trust since 2003. ‘When you make a contribution to a historic church, not only does it affect the building but it also has a huge and enduring effect on the people who live around it, or work nearby, or visit in the future. By definition, almost wherever the parish church is built it is the most significant public building. No matter how grand or how modest it is, it’s a shared space, it’s a public space. So the social benefits are wide-reaching.’

Grossman adds: ‘Many donors want a mix of philanthropy, including local and regional things, the arts and social services. Really there should be no reason why somebody could not support the local hospice or educational projects and a parish church.’ 

 
   
Images courtesy of CCT