St Peter & St Johns Church receive a total of £12,000 in grants

​St Peter and St John’s receives a £10,000 National Churches Trust and a £2,000 Cinnamon Network Community Grant to help build an extension to the church hall to house toilets, reception and meeting room.

Huw Edward, Vice-President of the National Churches Trust said:
“I’m delighted that St Peter and St John’s church in Rugby is to benefit from a £10,000 National Churches Trust Community Grant. The installation of up to date toilets and a new meeting room  will ensure that the church can be used for a wide range of community activities and be at the service of local people.”

The project
The project involves adding an extension to the hall, to accommodate three new toilets. The toilets date from 1984 and are inadequate for current use.
The new extension will also house a small reception/meeting room where the church/hall coordinator will be relocated from the vicarage, and where private conversations can take place with people in need of help from services such as Money Advice and a Food Bank. The church will no longer have worn out and inadequate toilet facilities, but more WCs to serve a greater number of people and better equipped for the elderly and less mobile.

The church
The church started near the railway station when Rugby was an expanding railway engineering town. The current building is a large brick structure built in 1908 by C. Ford Whitcomb. In 1984, after a nearby hall was destroyed by fire, the main church building was split into two to create a community space at the rear, with the main entrance bricked up to create space for a couple of toilets. This last action had an unfortunate impact: many people assume from the bricked up entrance, that the church is closed!
In addition to worship, the church hall [within the church] is used by, mother & toddlers groups, for community lunches, by a ladies group, "knit and natter", a men's breakfast and for the "Veg Beds" communal garden meeting.
Sheila Bridge the minister in charge of St Peter & St Johns says "We are delighted to receive these grants from National Churches Trust and the Cinnamon Award towards what we have called 'Project Welcome'.  We hope that this Church redevelopment plan will enable our building to better reflect our welcome to everyone and help us to serve our local community more effectively.  These awards also mean that we have reached our target for Phase I of Project Welcome and we anticipate starting building work in Mid September.  We also deeply appreciate those who have worked with us to get us this far, both those who have given generously and those who have assisted us with making bids to Funding Organisations." 

PCC have champagne and cookies at the start of their most recent meeting.