BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON HISTORIC CHURCHES 31st ANNUAL EDITION 27 CLOSURE AND REUSE The evolving procedures of the Church of England Adrian Browning THE PROCEDURES to be followed by the Church of England for the closure of churches are under review. This is partly because new ownership models are being considered by many communities where the use and significance of their church building extends beyond its role as a place of worship. Since medieval times the Church of England has been organised primarily on a territorial basis, focused on the identity of communities within a geographic place, with the parish and diocese as its building blocks. The historic understanding of the church was that it provided pastoral care to its members, the people of England, through a network of parishes and dioceses covering the whole country. Looking at this today, the situation is less clear cut as a result of religious lifestyle and demographic changes. However, the building that is the parish church stands not only as a beacon of that medieval past (even where the building itself may be more modern) but also as a contemporary marker of how a place has come into its present shape and character. Today, as the Church of England is the established church, all the inhabitants of a parish continue to have certain rights, including the right to be baptised, married or buried by their The former church of St Osmund (Grade II*) in Parkstone, Dorset, was designed by ES Prior and Arthur Grove and completed in 1916. Following structural problems it was sold in 2005 but it remains a place of worship, now as St Dunstan’s Antiochian Orthodox Church.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzI0Mzk=