By James Murdoch, Churchwarden in charge of the fund-raising
The Good Shepherd Church has raised more than £8,500 of its £24,000 funding target to rebuild the collapsed church wall on Wantage Road. Many donations, which will be further boosted by Gift Aid, have come from members of the wider local community as well as from church members. If you want to donate click this link https://gofund.me/a2d29be4
The high cost of the rebuild – a total of £44,000 – has surprised us and some donors. In the interests of transparency, this is the reason it’s so expensive.
The church and its boundary wall is locally listed and we have had to respond to conditions imposed by Lewisham Council and Southwark Diocese. The resulting foundation spec is onerous in that we are required to have deeper and wider foundations than in the initial estimates. They must go under the pavement with bridges over the roots to protect the trees. In addition we have been given strict specs for bricks and mortar to match its historic appearance.
The church invited 5 firms to tender obtained four quotes for the work ranging from the £44,000 to £85,000. The bid accepted was the £44,000 one from a local builder. It is perhaps significant that the other local builder declined to bid on the spec that has been imposed on us.
However, in addition to the Wantage section of wall, we need to do essential repairs on the Handen Road section to stop it falling and hope to replace unsuitable modern bricks installed on a short section of wall on Handen Road a few years ago with the old bricks from Wantage Road. This would cost a further £9,000.
As part of the planning process we were required to use a specialist structural engineer, foundations and tree experts, and an architect. The church has provided a total of £25,000 from congregational funds to cover the professional fees and part of the building work, roughly what we had hoped the total cost would have been. As the lowest bid is significantly above that we need to ask for help.
We are also going to grant-making bodies. Unfortunately, most trusts that support churches exclude boundary walls while others require us to have already raised a significant amount, usually 50 per cent. But we persevere.
Here again is the link to the fundraising page https://gofund.me/a2d29be4
This article was updated on April 25th 2025.