Our Restoration Project
A little bit of history.
Building work on St Luke’s Church, on La Route du Fort, began on St Luke’s Day 1848 and the finished church was Consecrated for worship on 27 April 1852. The cost of the building was £4150 ! Since then, it has stood as a beautiful symbol of the presence and love of God in the midst of Georgetown, but of course, with the passage of time, it has become necessary to address some issues with the fabric of the building and some of the internal features.
On 27 April 2027, we will celebrate the quartoseptcentennial (!), or 175th anniversary, of Consecration and in preparation for this it has been decided to embark on a significant Restoration Project, which will address a variety of issues ranging from damp ingress through the walls, to the need for carbon neutrality. We hope also to upgrade our church hall, providing a valuable additional facility for the local community. Alas, the bill for our estimated costs will be somewhat greater than that faced by our forebears and our fund-raising team has a target of £1m.
What we're going to be doing.
There are seven key areas of work that we want to undertake:
1. Repair the south porch and fix the serious damp problems in that area.
2. Install a glass Memorial Door in the south porch, bearing the names of the departed loved-ones of members of the congregation and the wider community. We will also place two wooden doors in the outer opening of the porch.
3. A number of areas of our interior walls are very damp, so to solve this problem we will undertake external repointing.
4. There has long been a problem with a leaking roof junction between the east end of the church and the church hall. At last, we have a plan to resolve this!
5. Our ageing halogen and sodium based lights will be replaced with a state-of-the-art programmable LED lighting system. Not only will this enhance lighting in all areas of the church, but also it will reduce power consumption considerably, leading to much lower running costs.
6. The church heating system is oil-fired and very inefficient, so we plan to replace it with new electric radiant heaters, running alongside an innovative heated-pew system. This will aid us in hitting the States of Jersey and Church of England 2030 target for carbon neutrality. And it will also assure the warmth of worshippers!
7. The current sound system has reached the end of its useful life and is to be replaced. At the same time, we intend to install a projection facility for presentations, video, etc. And finally, we're going to fit a number of permanent live-streaming cameras, to better serve our online congregation, established during the pandemic and going strong to this day.