BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON HISTORIC CHURCHES 31st ANNUAL EDITION 33 MOD CHURCHES Joanna Collie THE VAST majority of churches, chapels and other places of worship in the UK are owned by religious bodies, but not all. Other organisations with their own private churches and chapels include schools, universities and various public and private institutions. As one of the largest landowners, it is perhaps not surprising that the Ministry of Defence finds itself responsible for some of these. The MOD owns or has legal rights over approximately 1.4 per cent of the UK’s land mass. Training areas and ranges account for around 75 per cent of this, some 259,300 hectares, and there are military bases of one form or another dotted across the country, from historic naval dockyards to city centre barracks. This vast estate contains 771 scheduled monuments and about 830 listed buildings, of which 15 are historic places of worship. Some of these churches and chapels were incidental acquisitions. Others were built specially for the purpose of serving a military base or institution, or were pre-existing churches which were adopted by the military as their base expanded. The task of managing and maintaining the MOD’s estate falls mainly to the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO). Given the number of listed buildings and scheduled monuments in its care, the DIO supports a dedicated heritage team comprising three conservation specialists who advise and work with the stakeholders on how to care for its heritage, including the churches and chapels. Their buildings receive conservation work when needed, often with the help of the DIO’s own Conservation Stewardship Fund. As well as supporting built heritage, this fund’s remit includes the conservation of the natural environment, landscape, recreation and public access. FLIMSTON CHAPEL, CASTLEMARTIN TRAINING AREA, PEMBROKESHIRE St Martin’s Chapel, Flimston, is one of many which are now cared for by the MOD following the requisitioning of areas of countryside for military training during (or just before) the second world war. In Norfolk, for example, land requisitioned in 1942 for the battle training area of Stanford included several villages and four churches. Most of the buildings in villages like these were pulled down or adapted for training purposes, and only the churches survive largely unaltered. Although three of these Norfolk churches are currently derelict and unusable, services are still offered occasionally in one of them, West Tofts, and all four have recently been passed back to the Diocese of Norwich. Ordinance Survey maps show that the area around Flimston was sparsely developed when the Castlemartin training area was established in 1938 for tank training by the Royal Armoured Corps, with just a few neighbouring buildings. The chapel is all that remains. It is a simple, single cell building with a steep stone vaulted roof. Its bell tower was added in the late 15th or 16th century. The chapel was converted to a cart shed in 1785 and blocked openings can still be seen on the east elevation. A variety of uses followed until 1903 when it was restored and rededicated by Lord and Lady Lambton as a memorial to their three sons killed in military action oversees. Lady Lambton was the daughter of the Second Earl Cawdor, on whose estate it was situated. Most of the Cawdor estate was subsequently sold to the MOD, and the chapel was abandoned. Although repair works were carried out in 1963 to keep the building wind and watertight, by 2019 damp ingress was causing concern, so a condition survey was carried out by conservation St Martin’s Chapel, Flimston after conservation and repairs by Acanthus Holden for the DIO (Photo: DIO, Crown copyright)
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