PLANS to knock through the tower of a medieval church near Bath — to create a doorway to a recent kitchen and bathroom, yet to be built — are one step closer to fruition.
The Consistory Court of the diocese of Bath & Wells has granted a school for a doorway to be created within the north wall of the medieval tower of the Grade I listed Church of St Julian the Hospitaller, Wellow, six miles south of Bath. The purpose of the doorway is to supply access to a kitchen and bathroom which can be yet to be built against the external wall.
The petitioners were the Vicar, the Revd Matthew Street, and the 2 churchwardens. The petition was formally unopposed and had the unanimous support of the PCC; no objections had been received from the parishioners at large. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, nevertheless, considered that intervention within the medieval fabric was unjustified.
The petitioners explained that if a choice against the availability of the doorway was postponed until all facets of the broader scheme for the kitchen and the bathroom were finalised, there could be a big waste of time, effort, and expenditure on the a part of the parish. Conversely, if the popular technique of access was permitted, it might be possible to proceed with further detailed work in the arrogance that the scheme wouldn’t fall at the primary hurdle.
If there was to be no breach within the north wall of the tower, the complete project as currently formulated was doomed to failure.
The Diocesan Chancellor, the Worshipful Timothy Briden, said that rule 1 of the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2015 set out an overriding objective to “enable the court to take care of cases justly”, and specified that the overriding objective included “saving expense; . . . coping with the case in ways which can be proportionate to the importance of the case and the complexity of the problems and; . . . ensuring that it’s handled expeditiously and fairly”.
In applying those principles — specifically, the saving of expense and the necessity for expedition and fairness — it was clear, the Chancellor said, that the difficulty of the doorway within the tower needed to be resolved promptly. Since the petitioners weren’t able to present a comprehensive petition covering the complete scheme, it was not practicable simply to direct the query of the doorway to be determined as a preliminary issue.
On 24 June, a direction was provided that a petition ought to be lodged limited to the creation of a doorway within the tower wall for the aim of giving access to future kitchen and bathroom facilities. Should that petition achieve success, the petitioners could be at liberty to present a second petition coping with the remaining of the scheme.
At present, the kitchen and bathroom facilities on the church were almost non-existent, the Chancellor said, and that gave rise to inconvenience when congregations of the order of 100 may very well be expected at weddings, funerals, and major festivals, quite aside from falling in need of the needs of normal worshippers. The lack of such modern facilities was rightly perceived by the PCC to be an obstacle to growth in addition to failure to make effective use of a horny historic constructing. The Chancellor said that the petitioners had “established a compelling need for these facilities, at the least in some form”.
The petitioners had considered several options and concluded that the creation of a doorway within the north wall of the tower was one of the best one. They had also sought advice about whether, within the event of a future change of circumstances, it might be possible to shut the opening and reinstate the wall. They had been advised following a structural assessment that if “it was ever decided to shut the brand new opening, this may be achieved by simply rebuilding the stonework in an identical way because the exploratory core holes were reinstated”.
“Thus the creation of a recent opening was reversible,” the Chancellor said, “albeit without using the unique stone if that material ceased to be available.”
The Chancellor also considered the recommendation of several consultees. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings opposed the scheme. The Church Buildings Council “was cautiously receptive in its response to the petitioners’ preferred scheme”. Historic England was supportive of the petitioners’ case, and the Ancient Monuments Society “raised no concerns over the proposed breach of the tower shell”.
The DAC didn’t recommend the petitioners’ scheme. The Chancellor said that the “parish can have done itself a disservice in failing to interact more constructively with the DAC”, and the “tenacity with which it had pursued its preferred option perhaps disguised the extent to which other options had been weighed within the balance and located wanting”. The Chancellor added that it was “doubtful whether returning to the well-trodden path of the choices appraisals would yield any fresh insights”.
The Chancellor decided that the petitioners’ preferred option was, on balance, the right one. That decision, the Chancellor said, was “made within the face of competent specialist opinion and never reached frivolously”. It was, nevertheless, “fortified by the assessment of Historic England”.
The faculty was issued subject to the condition that no work be undertaken under it, save preliminary archaeological investigation, until an extra faculty for the development of the associated extension had been granted. There were also two further conditions. First, that the scale of the doorway be restricted to the minimum extent practicable for the needs of disabled access, and second, that the petitioners provide the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings with details of the design and material of the lintel and have regard to any advice given by them in that respect.
It was implicit that when the second petition was presented no objection coiuld be admitted in respect of the availability of the tower doorway.
