Appeal to keep historic church open to public

Apr 30 2008 by Liam Murphy, Liverpool Daily Post

Appeal to keep historic church open to public

CHESTER’S oldest church – its original cathedral – has launched a desperate appeal to raise funds to remain open to the public.

Rev David Chesters, Rector of Chester, said that, without extra funding, the Parish Church of St John the Baptist, the first Cathedral of Chester, would be forced to restrict its opening times.

He said without additional financial assistance the church, which is currently open 365 days a year from early in the morning until dusk, with all the bills paid for by parishioners, will be closed more often.

Rev Chesters said: “The burden is becoming too great for the parish to bear. But we really need, for the future, to safeguard this church.

“We are a city centre church surrounded by shops and offices and the present congregation do a magnificent job in keeping what has been described as the ‘gem of Chester’ open to visitors from all over the UK and abroad.

“In order to help ourselves, we are launching ‘The St John’s Project’ to encourage more people to come and help us preserve this very special building and keep it open for future generations. The history of Chester is mirrored in its walls as in no other building in the city.”

Yesterday the church revealed its plans for a massive programme of restoration and making St John’s even more available for secular events and a centre for the community.

The church has arguably the finest acoustics in Chester for concerts, and is said to rival any other venue in the North West of England.

Rev Chesters said it would cost millions of pounds to achieve their aims which include more non-religious events to take advantage of the building’s acoustics.

He said: “To do that, we have to heat and light it properly but without changing the fabric of the building because it’s so important.

“From the outside it has this Victorian facade, but when you step inside it’s medieval. But we not only have medieval artifacts, but I would conjecture that we stand on a Roman-Christian site.”

St John’s is a Grade I Listed Building, built on the first Christian site in Chester and was founded in AD 689 by Ethelred, King of Mercia.

It is the original Cathedral of Chester and later its Collegiate Church.

Apart from its current massive structure, its size in the 16th century can be gauged by the ruins at the east end and the west end of the church.

It is described as one of the finest examples in Europe of the transition from Norman Romanesque to the Gothic and was described by the architectural expert Pevsner as “taking a walk back into the twelfth century”.

A previous Chairman of English Heritage called it the “hidden gem of Chester”, and even the organ is famous having been played at Westminster Abbey for the Coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838 and then transported to Chester by barge.

liammurphy