REACH Ely Case Study Series: St John the Evangelist, Waterbeach
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Cambridge Judge Business School 1 REACH Ely Case Study Series Reimagining Churches as Community Assets for the Common Good ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST WATERBEACH Text, design and photography REACH Ely (Reimagining Churches as 2 Dr Timur Alexandrov Community Assets for the Common Good) Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation is a multi-partner research project that Cambridge Judge Business School aims to help communities make fuller use of their churches. Editorial board The project is implemented by Dr Helen Haugh Centre for Social Innovation at Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation Cambridge Judge Business School Cambridge Judge Business School and the Diocese of Ely Geoffrey Hunter with the generous support of Allchurches Trust Diocese of Ely and Historic England www.reachely.org The challenges facing church communities and their buildings have been extensively studied in the light of declining church attendance in the United Kingdom over several decades. REACH Ely aims to address the less-well-understood opportunities for churches to engage and reconnect with the 97.7 per cent of the local communities in the Diocese of Ely who do not attend their parish churches. With the absence of universal determinants of success and failure of churches in the community engagement context, the REACH Ely project will provide an understanding of the relationship between communities and wider use of church buildings as well as the contribution that churches make to the common good. The project will determine community values, needs and opportunities that can be used in the most effective way to ensure a win-win outcome for communities and a sustainable future of church buildings. The case study series is based on in-depth interviews and observations about church building use with informants from a subset of deaneries and parishes in the Diocese of Ely, supplemented with secondary information about the communities they represent. The purpose of the case study is to unearth various church experiences in renovating and envisioning their buildings as missional and social spaces, engaging with local and wider communities, addressing current challenges, and learning from their practice. The Glossary is a separate document that accompanies the case study series. It is available as a download from the project’s website www.reachely.org On the cover: St John’s church pulpit (1883) with elaborate mosaic panels. Copyright © 2021 University of Cambridge. All rights reserved. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from The Ely Diocesan Board of Finance under research grant ref RG95970. REACH Ely | www.reachely.org 1 ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST WATERBEACH Church Category: Rural Deanery: North Stowe Address: Station Road, Waterbeach CB25 9HT Website: www.stjohns-waterbeach.org.uk Summary Buildings and Artefacts: Grade II* listed building; Rebuilt spire; Elaborately decorated chancel; Pulpit with mosaic panels; Fragment of ancient sculpture of cherubs; Electric pipe organ; Stained glass windows; Marble Communion Table; New heating; Church Room (church hall) with an office, kitchen, storage area and facilities; Spacious car park Congregation to Population Ratio: 71 / 5,143 Fundraising: Friends of St John’s; Contactless system; Waterbeach Feast Income Generation: Charitable Foundation created by the sale of glebe land; Funding obtained for Children and Families Minister; Rental income; Parish giving Communications: Two parishes website and Facebook; Beach Churches Together YouTube channel; Weekly handout The Fold; Village magazine; Visitors’ Book; Church noticeboard Community Engagement: Collaboration with Church band; Links with other churches; Making Sense event; Beach Churches Together Holiday Club; Third Space Conversations; Café church; Exhibitions; Eco Church; Food Hub; Breakfast church in Landbeach. 2 REACH Ely Case Study | Part 1: Roots ROOTS Profile Waterbeach is a large English village on the edge of the Fens, 6 miles (9.7 km) north of Cambridge in the district of South Cambridgeshire. Waterbeach covers 2,327 hectares (c. 5,750 acres) and the parish stretches for almost 8 km along the west bank of the River Cam. Waterbeach and its sister village Landbeach (population 841 in 2018) are on either side of a major road connecting Cambridge and Ely (See REACH Ely case study Landbeach). Waterbeach has expanded considerably in recent years due to economic growth in the region and has increasingly become a dormitory settlement for Cambridge. Further housing is planned on the former army barracks site, providing up to 10,000 new homes. The population of some 5,166 inhabitants recorded in the 2011 Census will undoubtedly have grown and is set to expand significantly in the coming years. There is a village hall and a variety of shops and businesses. Cambridge Innovation Park was opened here in 2012, providing serviced offices for high tech businesses. It has expansion plans on this site, as well as in other parts of Cambridgeshire. There is a small industrial estate at the edge of the village and a number of small companies have premises in the village itself. Waterbeach Community Primary School has approximately 300 pupils. There are three public houses and The Beach Social Club – formerly the British Legion. To the south-east is a Woodland Trust nature area called Cow Hollow Wood, created in 2000 to mark the Millennium. Other places of worship include the Baptist chapel and the Salvation Army Church. Waterbeach has very good transport links, with its own railway station on the main line from King’s Lynn to London, and is close to the busy A10 road linking Ely and Cambridge. The A14, providing access to the east coast and the Midlands, lies a few miles to the south. The parish contains a number of Scheduled Ancient Monuments including Denny Abbey, home of the Knights Templar in the 12th century. It also sits adjacent to Car Dyke, a Roman waterway, which was constructed to transport goods. There are other Roman works to the east, notably Bottisham Lode which served a drainage function. REACH Ely Case Study | Part 1: Roots 3 Top: View of the church building and Church Room from south-east. Middle: North entrance porch and War Memorial in the churchyard; Noticeboard by the road. Bottom: View of church buildings from the car park. 4 REACH Ely Case Study | Part 1: Roots Buildings sale of further glebe land in the 1970s has There has been a church at Waterbeach resulted in a large portfolio of investments since c.1160, when priests were recorded (see Income Generation). there. The present building is built of field stones dressed with ashlar, and consists, The churchyard was too small for so after extensive 19th-century alterations, of populous a parish and was closed in 1855. In a chancel with transeptal organ chamber, 1879, the vicar sold one acre of glebe land to aisled and clerestoried nave with a shallow the northwest of the village to a burial board, north porch, and west tower. The earliest and this ground was still in use in the 1980s, surviving part of the church is probably the when there was a mission chapel situated two eastern bays of the nave, which were in Joist Fen. This chapel was dedicated to St possibly cut through the thick walls of an Andrew. It suffered structural damage in the earlier church. The north aisle had a doorway 1960s, was considered beyond repair and with dogtooth mouldings and a lancet to subsequently demolished. The south aisle the west. It received new windows in the at St John’s was dedicated as a ‘memorial 15th century, when a chapel with two similar chapel’ for St Andrew’s. three-light windows was built north of the chancel. The clerestory was probably also The Grade II* listed church building is is put up in the late 15th century. broadly good, but there are a number of challenges facing the fabric, e.g. dampness The upper part of the tower, damaged and the status of the Kempe window. A when the spire was blown down in 1719, new heating system was installed in 2016. was rebuilt c.1720. In the 18th century, the Remedial work has been carried out on the nave received new seating, including several driveway. More recently, the Kempe window high pews, and a gallery filled its west bay, was removed for restoration, funded by the blocking the tower arch. A clock installed Friends of St John’s and the Kempe Society. in the tower in 1746 was replaced in 1865. Future plans include the installation of a The bell frame, which appears to be elderly bicycle parking, a solar PV heating for the and worn, is in reasonable condition, and Church Room, a sound system, and an the five bells are no longer rung. audio-visual system. Restorations of the nave and the south aisle The church can accommodate 200 people walling, rebuilding of the north aisle and comfortably, although up to 300 have the then dilapidated chancel, and adding attended larger services, such as on a new transeptal chapel in Perpendicular Remembrance Sunday, with the use of style to house the organ were undertaken additional chairs. There is a child-friendly in the 19th century. The tower was repaired area with toys, books and craft materials. The in 1965, and further substantial work began church has a spacious car park. The building with the aisles in 1979. is open to the public seven days a week. Under a Chancery order of 1729 the church Church Room. The adjacent Church Room, was entitled to the surplus income of the built in the 1970s, can comfortably seat 60 parish charities to pay for repairs. It was people. It functions as a church hall and made a separate ecclesiastical charity in houses an office, kitchen, storage area and 1904-05 and remains active to this day. The WC facilities.