Repairing St Lawrence's Church, Gumfreston

Hello everyone, I'm Rachel Morley, I'm the director of the Friends of the Friendless Churches, and I'm here with Andrew Faulkner, who is the architect of St Lawrence's Gumon Church in Pem Brookshire, this is a recording of, this is . a recording of the talk we gave at ten last week, this is for all our members and followers who couldn't be at 10B and just to catch up on what's happening at St Lawrence's. um, geez, let's try it, first of all for anyone who doesn't know. uh the friends of the friendless

church

es are a small charity we were set up in 1957 to rescue, repair and reopen redundant places of worship for community use and enjoyment.

We currently have 64

church

es in our care, half in England and half in Wales, they are appearing on the screen now, um, and they are. I mean, I'm biased, of course, but they are some of the most beautiful and wonderful buildings and some of the I think it's the most important kind of cultural treasure on this island, and it really is a great privilege to take care of them, so these are the churches, this is St Mary's End in Dorset and this is St Mary's Talis Lin in Angley and all of these. The churches are in pretty good shape as you can see right now, but it wasn't always that way, so there won't be a lot of sad church photos in this slideshow, I promise, but these are some of the churches we saved right at the beginning of the existence of our charity um and these are some of the buildings that um yeah uh the kind of state of dereliction that the churches were facing um so you know there was neglect Demolition and and vandalism, so they were in very poor condition, so This guy here, Ivor Bulmer Thomas, founder of the Friends of the Friendless Churches of Cumbran in Monmouthshire, got some of his friends together on July 3, 1957 and they created an organization called the Friend of the Friendless Churches and ever since then we've been doing exactly what they set out to do 67 years ago and that is, yes, rescuing and

repairing

places of worship in England and Wales, fortunately for ior um, some of their friends included people like TS Elliot and John Bimman and, you know, Lady Mander of Whitic Manor and places like that, so she had a good group of high profile friends to get her cause going, so again, these are some. of the first cases um but some of the first ones they dealt with are um tuxes Chapel Miland in West Sussex um and I'm pleased to say that's what it looks like now it's open every day it's got a group of friends . um, and it's a really beautiful little church, but it was in dire straits, um, in the 1970s, now people will say, well, obviously, in the 70s, you know, that was kind of the wild west or so. whatever, um, uh, when it came to churches. but actually, the churches are still not in great condition, so this is St Dennis's East Hatley in Cambridge, here we took this church into our care in 2017, this was in 2005, the IV was removed when we took it over, um. but it still didn't have floors, Windows, you know, the important parts, um, so for the last five years we've been fixing that and, oh, geez, yeah, I forgot about this, but in 2020, uh, we did a repair on it and I must have been a very slow news day because I was surprised to find myself in the daily mail, being quoted as essentially a bush, which is what St.

Genesis had become, shortly before we took over. but this is St Dennis's now a really beautiful church you know 13th century origins 19th century restoration by Butterfield um it sits in a Conservation Area cemetery um and has a great group of friends and supporters who have been with the church , You know? You know, even when it was completely overgrown, they have been Champions defending it all that time, so we are very grateful to them and of course to the church that we are here to talk about, well, St Lawrence's gon in pemr Shire , uh, it was um, I mean.

He was heading in the direction of East Hatley. I think this was taken in 2020 2021 and you can see the IV taking over. I know Andrew is going to show more photos of how the church is in the grip of the ivy again. this was when, when I first went there, yeah, so the reason this church caught our attention in the first place is because, Andrew was the architect of the church and he did a ququ inspection and he thought, wow, this church needs needs. a little attention too soon um and I knew the money wasn't there to take care of it um so that was in 2020 2019 2020 um so it took us about three or four years to get to this point because for friends um for anyone who doesn't know which we are a small charity, we have three members of staff, we receive a grant which we are very grateful for in Wales alone, which comes from Kadu and the church in Wales, but together it amounts to around £150,000.

St Lawrence's was over £500,000 so my trustee is a bit screwed, we won't be able to help any other church for many years if we are going to take on St Lawrence's so we gave it a try. uh to do what we could um this is a sign on the door when the church had officially closed um and it's the only church I've seen that's closed that has this please reopen written on it um and um it's just for show which We will later show the love and support for this church, but back in 2021 we still hadn't found the money, but we had a small work group, so we removed all the IVs we could, cleaned the drains and more or less unclogged gutters and things like that just to try to buy some time.

In 2022, we had a small grant from Kadu again just to do some urgent repairs to things like windows and roofs, which Andrew will talk more about in a minute, but we did it. that um and we bought a little bit of time which was great um but we still needed to raise quite a bit of money um and in May of last year uh we were very happy because we found out that we had been successful. I approached. the National Heritage memorial fund, which are funeral homes of last resort, so you have to prove that you have gone to everyone else and no one else will help you and then they will consider a request from you, so we went to them and we went. for them with two churches, one is St Lawrence's gon in pmri Shire and the other is St James's kangia in Monmouth, which I will mention again later, but I am delighted that they have provided a grant of £76939 for the repair. from both churches and that took us a lot of the way, so we were sure we could get the rest together and see it, so with that, you know, I called Andrew and told him the good news and we got to work .

I'm going to hand it over to Andrew now, um, who will tell you more about what happened from that point on. Okay Andrew, thanks Rachel, so I'm going to talk a little bit about the history of the church, um and how it's organized a little bit about the condition of the building as we found it a little bit also about the preliminary work that Rachel already mentioned, which were funded in part by Kad um and then I'm going to talk about the main repair project that we are underway at the moment, it started in October and will run until September of this year 2024 and there are three aspects of the project that I want to focus on .

One is the Tower and particularly the roof and the rendering because we are. We are going to render this church for the first time in hundreds of years. The roof repairs because we are going to have to repair each of the roofs. Completely and perhaps most exciting for some is the interior, where we will be removing moving paint throughout the church. and in fact we have discovered more medieval war paintings that no one knew about. How can I skip the slides? H if you yell at me I will Andrew thank you okay so let's just start with some plans um it's the same plan I'll show several times just to show which areas are the oldest parts and how they developed over time.

Sorry, we have the Nave in the center and the chancel at the East End, as you would expect in most. churches here we have the west porch on the left side and up to the top of the page is the transcept at ground level, but actually the tower rises above this um at a time five five levels of the tower um and on the side south of the The chancel at the bottom right is what is now known as VRI. It was probably previously a chapel, if we could skip it, the oldest parts of the church are thought to be the nave and chancel, which are from the 13th or 14th century.

There is some debate about that. because this is clearly a very ancient site um and has had early Christian and pre-Christian activities here there are wells in the churchyard that are known to predate the current church next slide please um but history, the records in history are quite um There isn't actually much information available, but we are told that the portico was added in the 15th century and the Tower at about the same time. It certainly seems likely that the tower was added at that time stylistically and based on evidence from others. churches in the area, that seems to be a good guess, the porch is vaulted and we'll see some photos of that later and there is some discussion about whether that actually predates the rest of the church, but we don't really know.

I don't know now and luckily the folks have appointed a really good building archaeologist to study the building now working on it and try to understand its history from the evidence on the next slide please after the 15th century probably in the 16th or 17th century, the three windows identified here were certainly added, there were probably predecessors, but these square windows were probably added at that time and what is described as a baptistery on the north side of the Nave, it's a guess that it's a baptistery um there's no complete evidence that that's what it is um but we hope to find out at some point um you know a little bit more about its history okay next slide please this page shows the major change that happened to the church throughout its history, which was a work of the 19th century.

There is a well-known architect called TG Jackson and early in his career he designed the restoration of this church, which included a complete renovation of the church, raising the floors of the Nave and probably also designed new roofs for the Nave. and the chancel, of which we will see more later and I don't know if you can see it, but in the The walls of the south nave at the bottom of the image, that long wall with three windows, that is, you can see the shape so low as the roof that pushed her out, probably the previous roof a few hundred years ago, um, in Victorian times. period or shortly after they added three buttresses on the south side to try to stabilize the building and that seems to be successful, well, next slide please, at that time because they were raising the floor and also blocking the south entrance so that only under the word Nave in the middle there is a red highlight on the wall so there is a block entrance in that position which was probably one of the main entrances to the church and in the West End and East End in the various places surrounded with The dashed lines show the Victorian alterations we know of, so the new windows at the east end are replacement windows i.e. and the oldest glass in the building dates from this period in windows one and two at the east end, in other places all the windows disappeared.

They have been replaced during recent work, okay, next slide please, as we investigate the building further, we found in the easternmost part of the Nave some evidence of who was involved in the building work here in 1867 under TG Jackson, so that there is some evidence. there in the photographs we are researching now to find out which companies were next so here are some photos before we start this is around 2020 and you can see the amount of Ivy that is growing on the outside of the building um and also . part of the poor masonry and one of the challenges for us in understanding what the likely repair costs and liability would be was that we couldn't see half of the building because it was covered by I, so one of the first challenges It was actually to eliminate that as much as we can so we can investigate better and understand what was going on on the next slide please.

Ivy is nothing new here in gon uh, this is a historical photo from 1868 that clearly shows a lot of ivy, uh, everywhere. At the west end of the building and if you look closely also at the top of the tower, there are photographs throughout the well from the late 19th and early 20th centuries showing Ivy in large areas of the building next to SL, so we found The roofs were in really terrible condition and I would say for a building that was in recent use, this is as bad as I have seen, particularly in this photo on the right side you can see that the tiles are just sliding off. p moment and what you're seeing is that the 19th century slates are the beige type, um andthen the repairs are on several other slates which are actually North Wales slates from almost blind Festin and probably Penin, which are the purplest. but even the repairs have been slipping and the previous roof has said there is actually very little left to fix due to the deterioration and the wood work underneath as well, on the next slide please, so here are some photos of the interior a The left is the main one.

View from the West End looking across the font and towards the chancel through the chancel arch in the distance and you can see how much of the interior was affected by the 19th century works, almost all the finishes you see, the floor , the roof structure and all the fittings date from the 19th century, but hopefully you can also see the character of the medieval building in the The sloping walls and slightly unusual shaped openings, which are not as true and perfect as the work of the 19th century could aspire to be, on the right hand side, you have a view taken from the east end of the Nave, so with the pulpit just behind you and facing north, towards the north transceiver below the tower and above, There is a vault that we believed could have been concrete based on some evidence from its documentary evidence, but in reality in our investigations we discovered all this.

The medieval lines may well be the shutters of the original form to form the VA many hundreds of years ago. Here on the left, it's a general view from the southwest, so you're looking at the porch on the left side and then the Nave. with its three buttresses on the south side and then to the right you will see the end of the V, the old Chapel and obviously the tower extends beyond, to the right you will see the Holy Week end of the presbytery. and these photographs were taken just after the preliminary phase of repairs that Rachel mentioned, fortunately with the help of CI a very good local contractor was able to carry out a lot of reorientation work and also replace the number of windows where there were only modern sheets of glass in place on the next slide please, so here are some more shots of the preliminary work which was largely carried out by Tom Evans from Cardigan Bay Architectural Conservation and here you can see the new windows in place using a variety of different lighting styles to suit the different shapes of the openings and also using traditional glass to give them that wonderful wobbly character on the right side.

There are some carpenters tackling some of the first parts of the wood flooring that we were tackling this. This is actually in the northwest corner of the Nave, where we really needed to provide a firm foundation underneath where the known historic wall paintings were so that we could allow that people work better and more safely. Okay, next slide, let's move on to the main project and that's how it started. in October 2023 and it can be seen that the entire building has been scaffolded, not only the main part, the portico of the Nave chancel etc., but also the Tower with a temporary roof on top.

This is really essential because we have been working all the time. during the winter under very strict limitations for the ecology, particularly as there are bats that have been using the building in the tower in particular, so a lot of the work had to be finished externally at the end of March and fortunately we managed to achieve that goal. Let's move on to the next slide, so this is right before we tackle the tower. You can see the point and this is one of the biggest challenges. It was the tower. It leaked for decades, as far as I know, and probably much longer. and jump into the church so that the water runs through the floors and, in fact, the old Pew platform under the tower, um, and the fixtures are completely gone, replaced with concrete, presumably sometime in the 20th century, but This pointing strap is interesting, which is all cement. and a modern intervention and it is easy to imagine that the pointing tape, as we call it and that sits proudly on the wall, actually reflects where the stones are and where the joints are, but in reality we discovered that they were much more complete, let's say The first thing we thought was that in the photo on the right you see very few stones in all the large areas of water, huge chunks of water C that had to come out, so it has been an exercise that took quite a long time to do without causing damage, okay? slide please, but when some of that mortar came out, we discovered that the trailer was actually very well built and you can see the photo on the left.

This is one of my favorites, it's just for a small Loop window in the tower, but it's such a beautiful shape. with huge stones in a very primitive way but built with great care, you can see all the packaging around the main STS to place it in a very orderly and built way on the right, there is some evidence of the historical rendering that was in the tower that we have. We don't know the age of this rendering, but it is likely medieval or shortly after because we believe that the tower has not actually been rendered for a long time, certainly until the 19th century.

There was no separate rendering left. Of these little elements, the next slide, please, although all you know is that the trailer is very well built, we found a couple of problems and a fairly significant one was the southeast corner of the Tower and here it is tied in place, What happened is that the stone coins in the corner, you can see them there right in the center, about six down, had become loose and dislodged, they had previously been held in place with large amounts of cement water, but a Once they were released, they were quite stable.

So they were tied down for a while and now they have been rebuilt into position and a couple have been fixed in place on the next slide please, so I mentioned before that the tower has been leaking for a long time and that is certainly the case. I have evidence within the cove that it forms a bit like a cave, so it is the lime from the limestone and the L waters that dissolve into water and then settle inside, so you can see the links STC there and certainly in the center. picture and then the inside of the walls are actually covered in this limestone, but we also know that all the floors of the tower, so at least three or four floors have completely rotted and are long gone, all we have It is an upper floor. um, which is largely replaceable with 19th century material, but interesting here in Geston, very unusual for a church tower, if you can see all those square holes, um, this just below the level of the viewing platform, all these holes They were built and designed to hold pigeons or double the next slide please, so here are some progress photos on the left side.

You have the merland that there is an embassy right at the top of the tower, some of which has been rebuilt, but the upper sections have been recapitulated in the center. They've spiked it a little bit and the gentleman is just working backwards to make sure it's compressed as it's fired and on the right side you have another guy who's actually throwing the mortar. It has a very sandy Mor. um in the bucket and you're putting it with a trout harling and that's a really good way to make it adhere really well to the wall so you're starting with a harling coat which provides a really good texture and once that's gone a bit We can apply more render KN which has a good key to bite into the surface below, so this is the first place coated.

So the left side is a view of one side of the tower at a stage of the scaffolding and you can see that. the rendering follows the shape of the masonry, so we're not trying to be too straight and the finish in the center is one of the bell tower openings. We have some replacement slate grilles and again you can see the rendering around them. following the texture of the wall and on the right side there is a detailed view that shows a little more about the texture that we are creating to make that key for Co later and all of these materials are based on lines um so that they are breathable and permeable so that the building can regulate humidity in the future.

At the top of the tower, this is the roof as we found it, on the left side, on the far left, you can see the two huge ones. slate slabs finishing off the spiral staircase that takes you from the church floor to the top of the tower roof, um, and just a small opening on the left side, but the main center section of the roof was actually placed in concrete, so Looking at the picture on the right, they have these wooden beams overlaid with corrugated iron, all of which was a temporary job as formwork that they poured their concrete on and the concrete was poured and reinforced with metal and the metal they used like as shown on the next slide Rachel, it wasn't as formal as we might use today, they actually used old bed frames, we have a picture of those, yeah, so on the left you can see the broken concrete and on the right you can see Again, more of that concrete is breaking up, but if you look closely, you can see some horizontal and vertical lines within it, and they are actually the sections of the metal bed frame and two were used bed frames at the time, so we believe this work was done post-war, when metals were particularly scarce;

Unfortunately, the roof was leaking and had been leaking for a long time and when it was only equipped with a small outlet, making it very prone to blocking and leaking inside the tower. When we opened it up we discovered that there were now four historic openings to drain the water out and a pretty interesting configuration for the roof, so this is the new roof structure. You can see a Central Valley in the middle and then the The beams on both sides are forming the slopes to send the water into that Central Valley and then on the right side it will come out through one of the original outlets through a session of which I think we have a photo on the next slide.

No, no, okay, sorry, I could come back to that, so this shows the condition of the bell tower as it was when we started, so here you have two steel beams on the left side that support the wooden beams and These are probably They were put in place because the ends of the beams were rotting in the damp walls and they were probably put in place around the time I think the roof of the tower was replaced, sometime in the mid-20th century, but you can see the degree of deterioration over time to the decking and beams there, particularly on the right side, which are also blackened and bleached with fungal growth, so we had to do a lot of replacements there and on the right side, picture on the right . you can see the only bell, actually a very old bell, one of the two oldest in Pia probably and dating back to the 14th century, actually sitting in a later frame dating back to the 19th century, but as always it seems to be the case , it's sitting in exactly the wrong position because it's right over the Decay area, um, in the photo on the left, luckily we've managed to fix that now that the contractor tree and the SS have done EXT on the walls and run back , redecorating and replacing them.

The elements that are deteriorated, well, on the next slide, here we can see the repaired Bell frame. We managed to preserve a large part of the Bell frame, but a couple of sections had to be replaced and were very carefully cut. I can see the bell there hanging and looking much happier in its position okay next slide please okay so on the roofs I mentioned before we have a lot of pmri sh slate that most of it was probably placed on the main ceilings, uh, on the main restoration. worked around 1868 um so the beige color type T is all pmri slate unfortunately it is no longer quarried and at this age it is in very poor condition it tends to be very very soft and delaminates very easily so no we have been able to use it. again or to find matching replacements, but we're using Welsh Lake from North Wales from Snowdonia, um, which is actually based on the repairs that you see there, the bluer gray color is the one that we chose, okay, on the next slide , please and but associated with Roes and its condition was the stone work on the gables.

I think these images are pretty emblematic of the problems in gon and the ivy getting so deep into the walls, we'll get to that later. How deep are the roots. I have um right down maybe 20 feet behind the plaster work behind the later finishes inside okay next slide please because of the problems with the wall heads and the ivy coming in and the path for the water , a lot of water had saturated the walls. um all the gable walls and all the beams that rested on them um suffered because they were in a very humid environment, so you can see on the left um you have a comb at the bottom and a ridge that supports the top of the roof at the top and both have been trimmed andwe have put in stainless steel plates that transfer the loads from the roof to the walls again correctly and on the right is a detail of one of those repairs and there are several methods.

As for the wood repair, in this scenario we could have cut more wood and done a carpentry repair, but in this scenario we were very happy to keep the wood off the wall, but also by using the stainless steel we were able to keep as much of it of wood possible. that wood as possible to effectively make a joinery joint and then lastly we would have to cut more wood which we are confident we do well next slide please and this photo is really to explain what the roof structure, um, is very beautifully designed by TG Jackson.

I don't know if you can see it, but there are actually alternating braid designs, so not all dresses are the same and sit on Coral stands. You can see below left and below right, which were placed at the same time. time, but they were designed in such a way that the main structure, the rafters in particular, are set into the roof board, so they are not really vulnerable to water from the roofs unless they get very, very bad, so In fact the armor survives almost intact. I have had to do some localized repairs, but very few, which is wonderful, so most of the repairs have been done at the ends where they have been supporting wet walls and along the eaves, particularly where Waters came in well. next slide please, here are some photos of the work in progress.

A couple of months ago the slates were put up on the left side, that's the chancel, so we have new felts, new bats and slates, you can see the Hessian guards in stone work and that is to protect the line plus make sure they don't come off too quickly because they can be prone to cracking. On the right side you can see the stone crowns are being replaced and look great. Okay, on the next slide, please, okay, so the port roof is. Actually, one of our biggest challenges, although it is one of the smaller roofs, can be seen on the left side as we found it.

So it is a volage structure inside, as the central image shows, but on the left side you can see what it had been. covered with patches of cement and concrete for a long time and it had been broken many times and vegetation had taken over and caused a lot of damage, but actually within that we found evidence of the previous roof finish, which was a red sandstone tile, relatively unusual. There are some examples on this part of the Ming ship, not much is mined anymore, but we have managed to find a salvage source from the MERS ship that we can use.

On the far right is an image of the last mosaics left in situ. The first tiles on the pillar you can see how they were laid as overlapping tiles and they are quite beautiful, very, very thick, unlike Victorian slate, but you can see the central image. The condition of the inside of the porch was very, very damp and hopefully you can help manage that during our work, so the last main area of ​​work I want to talk about is the wall paintings, so on the left, like We found the church when we arrived in 2019, there is some kind of window in the Victorian plaster. showing earlier plaster behind and on that surface there are some really important wall paintings from the medieval period, but they have been suffering due to a lot of water ingress and some structural movement again related to water ingress, so on the side right you can see what it was like in 22 after some initial investigative work and some emergency stabilization which has been really successful on the next slide please, in that same area we've all managed to find some more wall paintings so we're just in the early stages of determining how best to care for them and there is a very good war paint conservator who advises Jane Rutherford who lives in Pemrick here and on the left you can see some red oxide paint and carbon black there, um and some other traces of the same colors actually in the other two pictures, okay, next slide please, one of the biggest challenges here is removing the back paint that covers almost the entire interior of the walls, so the Mion paint was applied with the best of intentions. but unfortunately, it has not been the best for the building because it is made with acrylic, it is waterproof and so it retains moisture within the walls and has created a wonderful environment for the Ivy platforms to thrive and has caused quite a bit of damage. the water generator that has been held in some places where the paint was removed and water was seen running down the walls at the same time, so on the left is the view of the Nave so you can see the scaffolding in place which is for investigations of the mural paintings mainly on the left side of the north wall and on the fir wall, Directo, which is the east wall of the Nave and that is where we find the greatest evidence of medieval war paintings to which We'll get there in a second.

The second image in the center is of the north transceiver under the tower and you can see there about halfway through removing the paint from this point and finding a bunch of really interesting old plaster underneath, on the right side you can see some of paint removal methods has actually been quite laborious in some areas using ES scrapers by hand and under artificial light. Well, next slide, please, I mentioned that the ivy roots had gotten well into the building, and this is really characteristic of what we. We're finding it so on the left side you can see these heavy mats of ivy roots and this is actually behind where the extraction pit was and in an area where we know there are a lot of ancient medieval wall paintings that we're slowly getting discovering and what it is.

What's happened is that the ivy has been growing down, the roots have been growing down between the layers of plaster and they've also gotten behind some of the layers of the wall paintings and on the right side it's the same problem and this is in the chel simply demonstrates the perfect environments created by the leaks at the ceiling level and then the capture of the moisture that entered the walls by the imperious paint on the interior, okay next image please again , this is similar. problem, but in more detail, this is higher up on the east wall of the Nave and if you look very closely you can see some traces of color there, which are parts of more paintings, but you can also see all these very small tendrils of roots which have been growing not only through the Ross surface, but also through different layers of plaster below the next slide please, and here on the right side is perhaps the most readable part of medieval painting that we have found so far and it's in the area just behind the pulpit on the east wall again so I think at the bottom you'll be able to make out part of a medieval face with a slightly Ren cheek, maybe a pair of praying hands too and these are really important paintings and These traces and the other traces along the wall tell us that there are actually probably some really significant paintings left over a large area of ​​that wall.

Well, next slide, please, okay, so there's a slide here just to inform everyone who is involved in the project. obviously a friend of a friend, these churches are running the project, the main contractors, Tree and Suns, based in the Pemrick Shire, are doing a great job. I've been involved as an architect and lead designer, that's a health and safety role we've had, Ian Walker. um as a surveyor um John amlin a structural engineer some excellent advice on wall painting from Jane Retherford based locally and our wonderful ecologist um Sean Williams from kite ecology based at TBI we have also had specialist advice on Bell which has been provided free of charge and Very kindly from Peter Haywood, there are also a couple of notes on the funding that Rachel has mentioned and on the people who were involved in the preliminary works, including the architectural conservation of Cardigan Bay, and it is important to mention Eric Barnes Green, who is someone who does a lot. of maintenance and repair work for friends of friendless churches across the country has been particularly helpful at the high level removing Ivy, so okay, great, thank you, thank you Andrew, that's very helpful, thank you very much Andrew , um and I would just like to say um.

I mean, my sincere thanks to Andrew, who has been, you know, leading this project so wonderfully and with so much care, um and um, and passion, so it's fantastic, so thank you Andrew, um, so we did this talk in tenby uh they're having an open day on the 8th of june and there's a morning session and an afternoon session and you'll be able to meet billy and richard who are in this photograph here on the side left, who are from Tre and Sons um Andrew will be there, the environmentalists, the archaeologists, the curator of wall paintings um, so you'll get to see and meet a lot of the team that are making all of this possible um, so it would be great if you could come um sign up on our website um I just wanted to finish real quick by telling you uh telling you a little bit more about some of the other things we have going on so obviously Gumon is on the site um it's our biggest repair project. which we have taken on in one go, so it is a big problem for friends, but we have many other things to do too, so we are also in the process of

repairing

, about to start repairing.

St James's kangia in Monmouth here, um, this is a little church like on the bend the same way you do here, that bend in the mono river um, its origins are from the 12th century, but you know, from the 15th century, um kind of a rebuild and then 19th century repairs and 20th century repairs, but the main problem here is that this building is at risk because it has sandstone tiles on the roof that are too heavy and unfortunately make the roof from shifting and cracking, so this is one. from Andrew's photo from some photos from a couple of years ago um, I mean, I don't need to tell you that it's not good if a wooden ceiling looks like this, um, it's an ongoing problem, someone tried to fix it with some rope . which was a little bit ambitious, I guess I don't know when this was done, but yeah, kind of historical repairs, but it's an important church for friends because, Ivor Bumer Thomas, who I mentioned in my opening slides, the founder. of friends who repaired this church in 1954 55 was almost in ruins and he restored it in memory of his wife Dillis, who died when she was only 28 years old, so he put a large monument inside the church so that the first thing you see when you open the door is a monument to Dillas, but he repaired the church and it has been open since 1955 and only closed in 2022, so you know it had a good run after its restoration.

So we are very happy to be able to take on this church so we are going to give a talk about a project like this at St James's, it is on the 16th of May in Abeni um and there are lots of details about this on our website so please Please book, it's a small venue so space is limited so we need people to book in advance. Thanks, what else do we have to do? We also have a busy year for friends, so St James's clanga. is starting on site next week, so at the end of this month next week, and we have Jones and Fraser as main contractor, we are about to start work at the beginning of May on another church, this Neo Norman St.

Andrew South rton in norfol um a really interesting church it's a Norman arch um uh chancel and a bit of applications that was rebuilt into a um this neo-Norman church by the norfolk cathedral structure surveyor John Brown in 1839 so brilliant Fantastic church, unfortunately in terrible condition, has been challenged for over a decade so needs a lot of work, roof drains everything, we are also in much better condition, we will also be tackling grade one, St Daniels Worthenbury. and reom, which is one of the best Georgian churches in Wales, you know, beautiful red brick, sandstone, um, dress, sandone, type of currency, coins, pinnacles, balls and things like that, um, inside it has a full set of 18th century benches, shields with painted panels. and crests, roko plaster work and some really interesting stained glass, um, so we're in the process of hiring that guy and then there's St Doed sland done in demish here, um, which closed in 2017, um, a double church really interesting, um, and it's um, it's amazing, it has all these views of boxes, um, it has, you know, some of them have plush lined interiors and things like that.

I have pews in the back for boys and girls, um, you really have the pulpit here, triple deer Decker Pulpit with um marif flag canvases on each side, a very little churchneutral and by the time you, in my trust, saw it in July 2023, they said we had to help it, so it closed in 2017 and was aiming to be a pilgrim church for a while, but the pandemic really put an end to that and unfortunately part of the roof has collapsed so we have to go ahead and fix it as soon as possible. Last but not least, it is possibly my favorite church that we know of.

We're taking on this year and I know I shouldn't have favorites, but it's um Sint tooog badog in Angley. Sorry, I misspelled Ang Angy on my slide, uh, apologies, but they are the quintessential friends of friendless churches. um, I've never seen a building as lonely as this, it's like you're driving by and there's nothing, not even a sheep or a cow or anything for Miles, um, and it's just perched and has panoramic views of the entire island, it's tiny, um. and um, it's like that, it basically needs some friends, um, so we'll take care of that, it needs repair, it's incredibly damp inside, it would be a run for your money in terms of humidity, rotting floors, benches and Florida paneling, and you know, you know.

The green drips down the wall more than the green drips kind of like green. I don't know about showers on the wall, um, but yeah, we're about to go out to Tender to fix that filler, so I'm really excited that we can take care of that. . My last slide is just a reminder that we have an open day at Geston on Saturday June 8th. Please book on our website. If you want to support friends, there are several ways to do it. You're not a member, you can become a member for £30 a year and we'll be happy to have you.

You can volunteer to help us take care of these places. We have a volunteer page on our website. We absolutely trust volunteers. There are only three of us who run Friends, so volunteers are the backbone of our organization. You can donate to help us do more. You can watch our film Stories in Stone, which is on YouTube and which we commissioned last year, and Andrew. Andrew talks about it very eloquently, which is great, and you can follow us on all social media to catch up with us, but without further ado, that's all from me and thanks for, thanks for listening.