By James Murdoch, Churchwarden, The Good Shepherd, Lee
If you’ve been to the Good Shepherd in person in the past year, you must have noticed that our boundary wall is in a poor state and badly needs some attention. Along the side of Wantage Road a 4-metre section has fallen over. Other parts of the wall need urgent repair to stop them from collapsing too.
We need your help to make this happen.
We are blessed with this wonderful open lawn, which we love using for things like the Good Friday community event, and which is used by many other groups like the Scouts and Guides. But the state of the wall means the space is not secure for children’s activities, while fallen bricks could present a trip hazard to people walking along the pavement.
So the church has decided to rebuild the wall to make our space, and our local area, safer again.
Because of the age and structure of the wall, and because the church is in a Conservation Area, this does not come cheap. Rebuilding the wall and dealing with the foundations in Wantage Road will cost about £44,000 in total. There are additional repairs we’d like to do on the Handen Road side costing £9,000, but that’s not our initial focus and remains a stretch target.
We’ve used Good Shepherd Church funds to cover professional fees for around £5,000 to win the permissions, and the Church has been able to put aside a further £20,000 for the building work. As for the other £24,000, we hope to approach some Trusts for grants, but grants for a project like this are limited, and grant funders tend only to get involved in projects where there is already community support.
And so we’re asking for your help. We’ve set up a donation site at https://gofund.me/a2d29be4 , and we’re asking you, our local community, to support the project as much or as little as you can.
The donation website has more details about the process and the costs, and a way to give by credit or debit card.
Very usefully, it also has a box you can tick to add Gift Aid to your donation, which raises our income by 25p from the tax man for every £1 given by you.
You can find the page at https://gofund.me/a2d29be4
Have been a member of this church for many years & it would be lovely to see it being safe & looking good again.