About

Cambridgeshire Historic Churches Trust

Welcome!

The Trust was founded in 1983 and since then has offered almost £3,000,000 in interest free loans and over £1,000,000 in grants for works of repair and improvements to places of worship across Cambridgeshire. Trustees continue to give priority to making loans (currently up to a maximum of £20,000), as these help congregations to embark on a project with the confidence that they can manage the cash flow – and once work starts, donations often increase. Like other trusts, our grants (currently to a maximum of £3000) are paid on completion of the project.

Cambridgeshire has more than 350 churches and chapels of historic and architectural interest. They span over a thousand years from the Saxon period at Great Paxton to the 1958 Stephen Dykes Bower church at Arbury in Cambridge. These buildings and their churchyards are centres for discovering local history and will often be the bastion of local distinctiveness of building styles and materials that gives the surrounding settlement its sense of place.

The care of places of worship falls squarely on the local community and especially its active members. They carry the burden of continuous maintenance and the raising of huge funds for repair. The Trust helps them with grants and loans and advice. We also offer funding towards improvements that enable these buildings to be more widely used in the 21st century, to projects that provide toilets and serveries, better heating and modern wiring. We also reserve £3000 each year for grants towards the repair and conservation of memorials and monuments, including those in the churchyard. We do not offer support for churchyard walls, redecoration or liturgical reordering, or towards exploratory work or reports.

The Trust’s charitable objectives also include encouraging everyone to enjoy and to understand the art and architecture of the county’s marvellous churches and chapels. We hold an annual conference in the spring on a specific ecclesiastical theme and run church tours in the summer months (open to everyone). We visit three churches and chapels on a Sunday afternoon, with our experts explaining the history and architectural features to be seen in each building. We finish with a delicious tea at our final stop and for those who stay on, evening prayer.

Our biggest fund raiser (over £16,000 in 2018) is the national Ride and Stride Day, which in Cambridgeshire we have decided to make “Ride, Drive and Stride”. Participants can use cars as well as bicycles, horses, buses or their own two feet to visit as many churches and chapels as they can on the second Saturday in September. By getting sponsorship for each church visited, money is raised for the Trust and whatever church or chapel you nominate to receive half the total raised.   See under “Events” for more details and sponsorship forms.

Supporting us:

You can find us on Facebook.

Membership – by becoming a member, you can be confident that your subscription goes towards the repair and maintenance of the county’s historic churches for future generations to enjoy, just as we enjoy them today. You also receive two newsletters a year and priority booking for our conference. By growing our membership, the Trust can offer more grants and loans and encourage greater appreciation and use of these splendid public places of worship.

NEW!  Gift Membership is now available.

Please join us! 

Vacancy for Hon Secretary – we need to recruit a new Secretary to replace the present occupant of the post who is standing down after serving for a number of years.   For details see Hon Secretary Vacancy.

Cambridgeshire Historic Churches Trust is a registered charity, number 287486.

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