Saving churches for their history - not religion

If churchgoing is a reliable indicator of Christian belief, then England began losing its religious impulse when Victoria was still on the throne. Attendance at Anglican services began its decline in the 1890s. By 1968, only 3.5% of the English population went regularly on a Sunday. By 1999, that figure had halved to 1.9%. And, as the numbers went down, the age of the congregations went up. The average age of a member of the Church of England is 50. In 2015, it is likely to be 55. If present trends continue – a phrase, admittedly, that always invites suspicion – then in 30 years' time two thirds of observing Anglicans will be more than 65 years old, and almost all of them will be women.

The social, constitutional and moral consequences of the church's shrinking importance are often debated, but perhaps the real threat, which all of us can care about, is aesthetic. More numbers: three quarters of England's 16,000 parish churches are listed as buildings of architectural and historic interest in Grades I, II* and II. Churches listed grade I comprise 45% of all England's buildings – castles, mansions, banks, railway stations, markets – in the same first rank. In the words of an official from English Heritage, this means that less than 2% of the England's population is directly responsible for the care of nearly half of England's finest architecture.

Public funds have helped the churchgoers. Since 2002, English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund have spent £179m on repairs to listed places of worship of all denominations (but mainly Anglican), and every year another £12m is doled out in grants equivalent to the VAT paid on the work. The fear, for English Heritage and the church, is that a Treasury hungry for cuts won't renew the VAT scheme when it runs out next year. In a report this week, English Heritage reckons that only about one in 10 listed places of worship is in poor condition, but implies that if the cuts come this number will grow. More leaking roofs, more broken stained glass, and then ruin or conversion into flats.

Lincolnshire is a good place to consider these things. "The second largest county in England and the least appreciated," John Betjeman wrote in his Guide to English Parish Churches. The Lincolnshire wool trade, flourishing in the 12th to 15th centuries, left behind a fine stock of medieval knaves, chancels, windows and towers; Lincolnshire has 913 buildings listed Grades I and II* and 418 of them were built to be prayed in. Like other rural countries – Herefordshire, Rutland – it has an unusually high number of listed churches per head of population. "A pre-industrial legacy," in the words of this week's report, "means that the cost of maintaining buildings falls to a disproportionately small number of people, mainly in rural areas."

[ARTICLE CONTINUES]

TexasBlue wrote:Ever feel weird when you go into one?