A structural report in 1999 suggested that the now demolished St Hilda’s Church building had many problems – for example, water ingress, cracking of floors and walls.  The cost of repair would have been so great that a decision was made by the Church Council that we look to re-build.  Much hard work during the intervening years resulted in a decision to sell surplus land and build a new church and community hub on the South East corner of our site.  Following a competition, Chance de Silva were the chosen firm of architects. Due to budget constraints, their original design was not viable, and therefore the above design is a simplified version of the original concept. This updated design, although modest in size, provides flexible church and community facilities and can be extended at a later stage if more funds became available.

Construction began in February 2020 and is expected to be completed in May 2021. The total cost of construction is £733 000 and whilst a significant amount of money has already been raised, fundraising is ongoing. To date, we have received construction funding from the following sources:

Sale of Church Land £173 500
The Mercers’ Company £100 000
National Lottery Community Fund £80 000
Ongoing Fundraising £34 250
Garfield Weston Foundation £25 000
Diocesan Grant £19 000
Bernard Sunley Foundation £15 000
Gift £9 250
Allchurches Trust £6 500
The Jack Brunton Charitable Trust £5 000
Sirius Minerals £5 000
Beatrice Laing Trust £5 000
Catherine Cookson Trust £2 500
K Loudon Trust £1 000

To date, we have received funding for equipment from the following sources:

Coronavirus Community Support Fund, distributed by The National Lottery Community Fund £9 375 towards IT equipment and training
The Rothley Trust £900 towards furniture

In order to complete the project we took out loans to the value of £250,000. These are being paid back over a period of 15 years.

See below for a video on our progress and where we are today