Monthly Report for the Heritage Lottery Fund December 2021
St Sylvester’s Church Renovation and Community Project, Chivelstone Parish, Kingsbridge
Work during December covered the completion of the physical repair and renovation to the tower and church walls and the internal new works by Westcountry Stonemasons (WCSM). Conservation of the pulpit was also completed by Humphries and Jones. Work also covered cleaning the church and implementing the Activity and Interpretation plans.
Tasks carried out in the Month
Project Administration
General project administration and record keeping was undertaken.
Financials
- We continue to try to raise additional funds with various support events such as coffee mornings and our virtual church jigsaw.
- It is likely we will begin to repay part of our loan facility in January 2022.
Heritage Works
This month the Project Architect and Contract teams have covered the following work;
- Practical Completion has been given to WCSM with only some minor snagging items to be completed.
- With Practical Completion being awarded 50% of the Retention Monies has now been released to WCSM.
- The ground around the tower has been relevelled and the septic tank buried.
- There have been no H&S issues and our adviser Health and Safety Associates is liaising with WCSM regarding completion of the Health and Safety works file.
- The Architect is on site every week and in close contact with WCSM day to day.
- The 12th works valuation is complete.
- There are regular monthly progress meetings between the PSC, Contractors and Architect/Consultants and the snagging visit took place in mid-December. A follow up final snagging visit is due in mid-January.
Communications
- The project website continues to be updated and we are still seeing a good level of hits.
- Instalment 16 of the Church Blog has been issued.
Community Engagement/Activity Plan
- With the lifting of Covid restrictions we are now able to implement the activities detailed in our Activity Pan but we are conscious that again these may have to be ‘worked around’ should the restrictions be re-introduced.
- Christmas services were held in the church for the first time in two years and we look forward to service normality now the repair works are complete.
- The development of the interpretation ‘tower’ panels with our consultant Smith and Jones is nearly complete and includes the feedback from the community.
- An immense amount of time is being invested by our volunteers in loading heritage data and photographs onto the computer touch screen.
- The development of the fourth interpretation ‘tower’ funded by the South West Maritime Achaeological Group (SWMAG) is underway.
Volunteer Time
- Volunteer time this month was 124.5 hours (1880 hours in total) mainly working on the Activities, Interpretation, cleaning the inside of the church and Project Admin.