Historic Churches 2020

28 BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON HISTORIC CHURCHES 27 TH ANNUAL EDITION hold services in Welsh in Welsh speaking areas. The rector brought Jelf before the Court of Arches and was successful, but the situation worsened when the Bishop of Bangor introduced a bill into the House of Lords to enable services to be conducted in English in Welsh speaking areas, provided certain conditions were met. This became the English Services in Wales Act of 1863, passed as a direct result of the building of this church. VISITORS ENTER AT THEIR OWN RISK As a Grade I listed building, St Philip’s is of exceptional importance. Just 1.6 per cent of all listed buildings in Wales are Grade I. Yet, taped to the south door the notice that welcomes people to St Philip’s these days states that they enter at their own risk. And visitors have good reason to be cautious. Chunks of plaster are dropping from the ceiling and the ancient electrics are dangerous. The church was built on a natural promontory with the land falling away, quite dramatically, to the north, south, and west. It’s likely that the site was The interior is simply decorated with plain plastered walls (Photo: Andy Marshall) One of the pairs of round-headed, Romanesque windows in the lean-to loggia The chimney-like bellcote holds four bells that were rung from a wheel in the shelter below: the connecting shaft remains at the base of the bellcote, but the belt drive which connected it to the wheel is missing (Photo: Andy Marshall) infilled to create a level base for building and, as a result, the church is moving – and cracking. The complicated drainage system has added to the problems and water has flooded in through the cracks, soaking the fabric. This in turn is causing the decay and localised collapse of lath and plaster ceilings in the nave and sanctuary, and in the loggia too. Because of the clogged and collapsing drains the walls are crumbling at low level. The roofs, neglected for many years, are now thick with vegetation and include some well-established trees. For a building of such architectural and historical importance, you might wonder how it slipped into such decline. However, getting to or even finding St Philip’s is not easy: it is closely surrounded by trees and tucked up a narrow, steep, winding slip road. The church was built to serve the students and guests of Rev Jelf who lived at Plas Caerdeon, but this country house is now an outdoor education centre owned by Liverpool Hope University, and the church itself still has just a scattering of houses around it. By 2014, the number of regular worshippers had dwindled to nothing, and the church closed. It sat for four years awaiting its fate. However, over these years, it had not been alone: the Friends of Friendless Churches (FoFC) and The Rev Petit Society have been its steadfast champions, willing it to survive. Finally, in late 2018 Cadw and the Representative Body of the Church in Wales (the property department) agreed that St Philip’s, with its newly acknowledged status, should be vested in the care of FoFC. Nevertheless, legal machinations meant that the church had to wait another year for its acquisition to be completed. In late 2019, adamant that this important building should not sit through another winter, FoFC began work on making St Philip’s watertight. The budget was tight, so works had to be prioritised carefully. In this first phase, following careful assessment, it was decided that all roof slopes had to be stripped and re-covered. This was the first time in its 156 years that the church had been re-roofed. And while the ecology survey confirmed the roof did not home any bats, it did not detect that squirrels had gnawed the rafters to pencil thinness in some places, nor that a colony of more than 30,000 bees were residing in the roof void. (Readers may be pleased to learn that the bees were carefully collected and rehomed several miles away, and are now happily producing honey, a jar of which sits in the author’s own kitchen cupboard.) All roof slopes were stripped, the timbers repaired and where needed, replaced, and the lead flashings were renewed. It had been anticipated that there would be a high yield of salvage in the existing roof slates, but once on site many of the slates were found to have large ferrous inclusions, which creates a weakness. This meant that a higher proportion of