On my way into the office this afternoon, I walked from the bus stop through Church Street, not my usual route, but I saw signs of building work going on at the foot of St John's tower and decided to investigate. To my great pleasure, I discovered that a start was being made on re-modelling the tower porch entrance to install glass doors and alter the position of the step down into the church, to make it safe for visitors unfamiliar with the building to enter with less risk of falling and hurting themselves.
With 50,000 or more visitors a year entering the church through the tower porch, there was always a measure of risk that someone would lose their footing, as they passed through the stylish 1960s wooden porch, not noticing the step down that followed. Accidents happened while I was Vicar and the Parochial Church Council took very seriously its responsibility to make it as safe as possible and make changes to minimise the risk to the vastly increased number of visitors in the past decade.
A plan was devised three years before I retired to remove the porch, install armoured glass doors and change the position of the step down into the church. It stalled, however, just before I left, as there was an objection to our application for a Faculty (church planning permission) from the Twentieth Century Conservation Society, concerned about the removal of the porch, which had been expertly designed by the architect George Pace, responsible for adding inside the church a kitchen, choir vestry and toilets.
The 'Pace Vestry block' has served the church well over the past fifty years, this is indisputable. However nicely designed for its purpose at the time, it is a brutalist modern insertion (in architecture-speak) into a fine fifteenth century building and looks ugly in context unless you know the story of the building. The south aisle in which the vestry block stands isn't fifteenth but a late nineteenth century extension, which happens to have been expertly built and furnished to a high quality, in other words fake gothic.
Architect George Pace knew this, but lived in an era when the new could assert itself against the old in the name of functionality and modernity. As the south aisle wasn't fifteenth century but a mere seventy years old then, any argument on aesthetic or conservation grounds could be easily overcome. The Pace vestry block may contradict current values and policy, but it stands as a witness to the debate about the church environment and pastoral requirements in the 1960s, just as much as the removal of rood lofts and chancel screens did in the sixteenth century, and their debatable restoration three centuries later.
So an argument can be made to keep things the way they are, as a snapshot of what happened in the middle of the twentieth century. The tower porch with its Pace doors is part of this equation. But what happens when the porch becomes a risk factor in the health and safety equation? Three years delay that's what. It's never easy to implement plans during an interregnum, and now St John's is in an interregnum for the second time in three years. It's a tribute to the Church Council and the authorities responsible for Faculties that negotiations about the planning objection were completed and that the project is finally under way. All this I missed out on by retiring punctually. Frankly, the Vicar's worry of coping with an unsafe environment and authorities that didn't seem to understand the urgency of the matter were among the factors that ensured my timely departure into my present circumstances.
A year before we left, the church's excellent building contractor Peter Bricknell went into liquidation due to recession conditions. I was glad to see his name on the contractors' site hoarding closing off the tower entrance for the building work. It means his outfit is back in business, and that makes it so much easier for everyone involved in bringing to completion a plan first mooted nearly seven years ago.
I popped into church and met first Norma and then churchwarden Richard, who arrived while Norma and I chatted. It was good to share my delight that work had finally started. I learned from them of the recent death of one of St John's long standing stalwarts, Mary Lewis, aged 83. Just ten years ago I gave her husband Herbert the last rites and conducted his funeral. "I hope you'll do the same for me one day." she said afterwards. In retirement, we often met in the St David's Centre. She was there most days sitting on the bench outside Debenhams, knowing she'd meet her friends there. I stopped and chatted with her on my way to or from work in the CBS office. Now, I must make it my business to be there to celebrate her life with all those from her life at Aberdare Hall and St John's who treasure her friendship over many years. May she rest in peace with him whom she loved but saw no longer.
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