St Andrews Church Disaster Fund

Andrew Cuthbert, under the advice of local supporters, setup this Go Fund Me page. The aim of this page is to save the church and the surrounding site in some form or other for the benefit of the local community.

Andrew Cuthbert owned the church since 2015 when he bought the building at auction after it had been disused for some time. His aim since the start was to bring it back into community use.

Andrew had until before the fire been working with Viresco a locally owned Charity to bring the church back into use. Despite this initiative taking a lot longer than all would have hoped it remains our goal to keep the church as a center of the community as it once had been.

 

We would love to see the building become a center for young entrepreneurship, somewhere that can bring young people, particularly those less well off so that they can have a place to meet and share ideas from which they can grow together, benefitting from the experience of our community. That said we have already had many ideas from the community and hope we can integrate a number of these into any plan.

 

Easter time is a time for renewal and rebirth, our opinion is that the church must stand in spirit at the very least.

 

It was after many multiple break-ins, that arsonists on the 23rd April 2022 razed the church to the ground. In times like these its only through coming together as a community that the Church can be brought back into use. The team can't do this alone, we all have a part to play.

While the church up until the fire continued to look pretty from the outside it's been disused since long before Andrew Cuthbert owned it.  Many dont realise Andrew has been looking to bring this into community use since he bought the church in 2015. First engaging a community worker to find community partners back on the purchase. By 2017 having had limited engagement Andrew had almost given up and planned to sell the building. Then he met Viresco who had come up with what seemed like a viable plan for The Church's future. Andrew helped seed Viresco so that it could work to bring the church back into use and the community. Viresco in 2021 secured a grant of £750,000 and we began speaking of a variety of things including community ownership. Unfortunately on commissioning a report it ceased works given it was deemed by them that that money was not enough to complete the refurbishment. At that stage discussions largely ended and eventually, Viresco moved in an alternative route.

We have tried so hard to bring people together to make this a success, It's our prayer that this fire can make it clear to everyone that we have to do something, faced with the ashes of the fire.

 

Over the years we have heard many heartwarming stories of personal memories surrounding the church. From christenings to weddings, to the memory of the old Minister who inspired many and is buried at the back of the church. Some of you will more recently know the church as a dance studio, or when it was Scallywags, a soft play area. Whatever your personal memories we have no doubt there is many a good one!

If you want to have your say on the future of the St Andrew’s Church please donate as little as £0.01 so as to receive updates and become part of the growing movement to bring St Andrew’s church back into action.

All those that donate in any way will:
·         Recieve ongoing updates on actions impacting the building and the site
·         Have a channel to share ideas with others involved in the plans for the site
·         Have a channel to bring your ideas to the owner of the building so they can be incorporated into a future plan
·         Have an opportunity to suggest a use for the building including your own projects and plans

 

Please share your own memories with any donation.

 

For the team that is forming behind The Church  & our supporters in the community, we hope that our voices of the need to save this as a community resource are heard and that this page can help ensure it isn't to be demolished. Every penny you donate will go to the project that is agreed through this page, beginning with making safe and reconstruction of the church. We accept we will need further public support which we hope will be forthcoming but with the grant previously awarded in question and no lease in place at the current time bank funding is not possible until some of the unanswered questions are resolved, one in particular one is perhaps the most significant who will use the building and for what. We need your time, support, money, and of course ideas to demonstrate just how much this building means to us all.

Please support us in bringing the church back into action. donate whatever you can afford! Every penny is precious.