We are making St Mark’s more accessible for community uses throughout the week, with meeting rooms, a café servery, toilets and good heating.
For several years St Mark’s has been considering how to improve the interior of the church building to make it more suitable for a wider variety of uses during the week, especially to support the communities of our Parish, as well as for various types of worship on Sundays and other occasions. This includes lowering the current carpeted floor and the Galilee floor to the same level as the main nave, installing toilets, an office, a meeting room and new storage in the Galilee, a purpose-designed servery in a similar location to the temporary one, flexible use meeting rooms in the north-west corner of the nave (where the prayer corner has been), flexibly enclosing the Memorial Chapel so it can be used as it is now but with other uses, the flexibility of layout in the nave with chairs instead of pews, and gas-fired heating. The chancel, organ, pulpit, and vestry will remain unchanged.
Such a development of the building is called “re-ordering” and we have now had permission from the Diocese to proceed to the next stage of our development. This means we are displaying a Public Notice inside and outside Church and on our Website and making the design plans and descriptions available to view in the church. Detailed plans and documents can be viewed in the church by appointment. Now the Public Notice is displayed, there is a 28 day period during which objections may be lodged, expiring on the 28th March, and the Notice will explain how this can be done. However, we trust that anyone having any concerns about the proposals will speak to any one of the churchwardens, or any PCC member so that we can understand and explain the plans and allay any concerns.
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