Lord Redesdale
Main Page: Lord Redesdale (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Lord Redesdale (LD)
My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for initiating this debate. I start by talking about St Mary’s Priory church in Abergavenny. I have never been to this church, although I hear that it is very good. However, the reason I raise it is that, when I heard that the debate was taking place, Mr Humphrey Amos, who works in the Whips’ Office for the Liberal Democrats, immediately said, “You must mention this church because there is an appeal going on at the moment for a roof fund and any plug will be particularly good”. So, even though he was useless at predicting the time of this debate, I promised him that I would raise it.
That perhaps goes to the heart of a lot of people’s views of parish churches. If the debate had taken place somewhat later in the Session, I think that there would have been a raft of letters asking us to mention particular churches which are at risk, where the roof is going or where funds are needed. Therefore, I am thankful that we started off quite early in the Session before there was a chance to get those letters. I know that many noble Lords will have taken part in drives to raise funds or have worked with their local community. Of course, this is not just a rural issue, because the parish church is not just a rural phenomenon. In town, you go to your parish church and each church suffers the same problems. In fact, that has been brought very much to people’s attention with the recent television series “Rev.”, which gives a very clear indication of it. One of the major plot lines is that the electrics are for ever on the blink and the priest does not have the money to replace them, so he is for ever looking at how he can deal with that problem.
Unfortunately, that is an issue that I come across in many rural churches. My own rural church is Holy Trinity in Horsley in Northumberland. We are in the most rural part of England. The vicar has to deal with six churches, some of which are 30 miles apart. It is quite a feat in itself to service that type of community. Even though we have a falling population—in Northumberland we have an ageing population and some of the rural areas are depopulating—I have always found it amazing that the churches are still seen as being at the heart of the community, and much effort goes in to keeping them in the condition they are in. It is hard to think of any other institution like that. The congregations have fallen but the churches are still in excellent condition and being used on a regular basis. The problem we face is that there has been a change in people’s perceptions of how they want to worship. The practice of turning up at church on a regular occasion is falling out of style with many of the population as people change the way in which they look at it
However, when a big occasion takes place, such as a wedding or a funeral, the church is then again the centre of the community and gets packed out. I went to a funeral recently in Holy Trinity and I learned a salutary lesson. If you go to a northern funeral you have to turn up extremely early because people go to the church and want to sit at the back. The closer you come to the actual time of the funeral, the further forward you end up. At a recent funeral I thought I would try to sneak in at the end, to show I was there, and I ended up sitting in the choir stalls right next to the coffin. It was almost an embarrassing experience.
To keep these churches going we have a raft of people who come forward to do the everyday necessities such as cleaning the gutters. We have a team who go round cleaning the gutters of the churches on a regular basis and looking after the churchyards. I cannot support the view of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that we should start to cull bats. If they cause some damage it is probably acceptable because of the threat that bats are facing, and churches are a refuge.
There is an enormous amount of nature in rural churchyards. Indeed, one of the problems we have is that there are diverse mushrooms growing in the churchyard so that people have made forays looking for a certain type of magic mushroom.
That leads me to two points that I wish to raise. The problems for churches have ever been thus. They have grown and shrunk throughout history and are indicators of the state of their communities. One of the standard pieces of work of an archaeologist is to look at the size of a church and to realise when that community was much larger and much richer. This is especially true in the Cotswolds, where a great deal of money was made from wool. Of course, the Woolsack is based on that money and most of the churches were built with it. We therefore now have enormous churches serving much smaller communities.
An enormous amount of work and rebuilding was done on churches in the Victorian period, and many of the problems we are now having are caused by roofs which are coming to the end of their lives. That puts a great deal of strain and stress on the community.
Now that some of these churches have gone forward we have a big problem with churchyards; many of them are filling up and there is little space—even in rural communities—for them to expand. As a society we should perhaps go back to the Shakespearean view: Yorick was dug up because you only got 10 years underground before someone else was put in your place. We have to start thinking about how we are going to use churchyards.
I commend the work of the Church Conservation Trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund in preserving our churches. I do not want to denigrate the work of English Heritage in ensuring that we preserve the historical nature of churches, but we should recognise that they are living buildings and have to move forward to meet certain needs. If we have to change the layout of churches to move with the times and ensure that people use these buildings, that is the best way of preserving parish churches.
Although there is a problem with failing congregations, churches are fundamental to the way in which people view the countryside—and not only the countryside but city churches as well. They have a future and will bring congregations together. However, we should not forget that they are living buildings and that, used properly, they can bring a community together.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, I do not believe that we should see them as the preserve of the Church of England—although the Church of England has to maintain the 16,000 buildings. In Holy Trinity, I encountered a not very large congregation, the majority of whom were from different faiths. However, they all came there to worship together because it is a centre in that small community.
We also need to consider the stress that is being placed on our parish priests. In the north-east we have a problem in funding and finding parish priests. It is a difficult job.
I commend the work of the bishops who manage this large edifice. I particularly recognise the work of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle, Bishop Martin, who is a fantastic inspiration. He goes round and talks to communities, especially about the difficulty in keeping these buildings maintained. He is a calming presence, puffing on his pipe, when he looks at church roofs, as I have done with him. I know he is retiring next year.
It sums up our view of churches that, although we consider them to be in peril, suffering and having difficulties, as you go round from village to village and see well kept churches in pristine condition, you know they have a future as the heart of the community.