Saint Wilfrid’s New Church Project. 10th June 2011

Only one year has passed since Fr Rory set up a committee to try to make progress on the project to build a new church in Hailsham. The proposal at that time was to sell the priest’s house, to demolish the existing church and to build a large church plus meeting rooms and offices on the site, so as to meet the needs of the community. That committee carried out consultations with parishioners from both churches. Although most people were happy with the plans, it was decided that this project was too expensive.

Fr Rory set up a new committee in January 2011 to look at alternatives. This committee decided to press ahead with building a new church because this is what most parishioners wanted. The existing church would be retained and converted to meeting rooms with a kitchen etc, after the new church was opened. However, all this work would cost over £900,000 but, so far, we have only  raised about £600,000. The committee thought that it should continue with the original plan to raise cash by selling the Hailsham presbytery, with Fr Rory moving to the Polegate house. However, the committee did not want to incur architects fees until it knew that the Diocese would agree to this plan.

So on 15^th April, Fr Rory and 2 committee members made a presentation to the Diocesan Finance Committee asking for approval to sell the house.  This proposal will now be reviewed by a meeting of the Diocesan Trustees on 4th July and we await their decision.

The latest news is that most members of that Finance Committee came to Hailsham on 23^rd May to look at the buildings and grounds. They met with Fr Rory and some parishioners and were given a conducted tour of the three buildings. We hope they will now make a report to the Bishop and the Diocesan Trustees to consider at their July meeting. If the decision is favourable then the project committee will draw up some detailed plans and show these to parishioners.

We ask everyone to continue to pray for the success of the project.