Video: Pennies from heaven for Yorkshire’s neglected churches

For the past seven months there have been no weddings or funerals at St Wilfrid’s Church, Halton, Leeds, which has been shrouded in a plastic canopy and a forest of scaffolding poles for work to the vast flat roof.

The congregation has been packing into the one area of the Grade II church where there isn’t any work going on, the Lady Chapel.

But it has been wet going.

“We are stuck in the east end where nothing is protected,” said Rev Darren Moore, “There’s no canopy over the Lady Chapel. It feels like it’s open to the elements.

“It is quite impressive when it really is raining - it’s like Niagara. Something had to be done otherwise it would have just crumbled away.”

St Wilfrid’s is among 17 of Yorkshire’s finest churches, whose future was a little more secure yesterday after an announcement that they were to share £1.8m of Heritage Lottery funding for urgent structural repairs. The church, designed by the celebrated Arts and Crafts architect Arthur Randall Wells, is getting the largest grant regionally - £222,000 - towards works which will eventually cost close on £1m.

Rev Moore said: “In 1937 it was cutting edge, but of course concrete and asbestos hasn’t weathered terribly well.”

The grants, administered by English Heritage, will pay for repairs to roofs, walls and towers to churches throughout the region.

Among those to get help is St Mary’s Church, Little Driffield, East Yorkshire, the reputed burial place of King Aelfred of Northumberland, and one of the oldest churches in the East Riding.

Antiquarians dug in the chancel for the remains of the King, slain in battle at Ebberston near Scarborough, in 1784 and again in the early 19th century but found nothing.

The £62,000 they have been given will help them deal with a crack in the tower, loose stonework in the parapet, and damp and decay in the south wall. Churchwarden Roger Gooch said: “The church tower has developed a crack which we have temporarily braced so it can’t fall down and hurt anyone, but it is not a long term solution, so we have to properly repair this, so it’s not going to be a problem into the future.

“We need £120,000 in total, so we now need to start fundraising.

“The church has been very important to the village for over 1000 years and obviously we want to keep it there for the next generation.

“Although the present congregation is low - as it is around the country - we still get 30 to 35 people attending, which is a very high number for a small village church.”

Other recipients include Christ Church, Doncaster, one of two churches that dominate the skyline, which received £174,000, and St Mary the Virgin, Long Preston, a popular stop-off for visitors in the Yorkshire Dales, where £41,000 will be spent repairing its fine collection of Capronnier glass.

Rev Stuart Stobbart said: “Being on the edge of the Dales it gets battered by the weather. They are in need of serious repair.”

Around half of those who applied for grants were successful this time round.

Trevor Mitchell, English Heritage Planning Director for Yorkshire, urged people to look after gutters: “The more it rains, the higher the chances are of gutters leaking and overflowing so the rate of decay of any building is directly proportional to how much rain falls on it.

“One year won’t make much difference but for the odd church a big fall of snow or persistent patch of rain can be the catastrophe that reveals the real state of the problem. Communities looking after places of worship are volunteers; they are not professional building maintainers and getting up to look at your gutters is a major piece of work.

“Certainly if there is a message it is look after your gutters, because it is the gutters which extend the life of your building.”

The current scheme is being replaced in June by the £30m-a-year UK-wide Grants for Places of Worship scheme, which will continue to prioritise urgent structural repairs but also allow bids to install toilets and kitchens.