THE incumbent of St Martin’s, Brampton, who wished to put in a lift, ramp, and railings on the church entrance to enhance accessibility for elderly parishioners, has been refused permission to achieve this due to “architectural significance” of the constructing.
The Consistory Court of the diocese of Carlisle refused to grant a college to allow these external works to be carried out on the Grade I listed church, and has refused an application for permission to appeal.
St Martin’s was in-built 1877-78 and its tower was accomplished in 1906. It is the one church designed by the celebrated architect Phillip Webb. It also has a whole set of stained-glass windows designed by Edward Burne-Jones and made by William Morris’s company. It is on the national list of Buildings of Special Architectural and Historic Interest.
The three petitioners — the incumbent, Canon Patricia Rogers, a churchwarden, and the lead of the church’s Equal Access Group — sought a college allowing them to undertake certain internal and external works on the church.
The court granted a college for the proposed internal works, however the proposed external works were opposed by the Victorian Society. That external work included the installation of a lift at the doorway alongside the steps that rose to the primary door of the church, with ramped access and associated railings.
The Diocesan Chancellor, the Worshipful James Fryer-Spedding, accepted the Victorian Society’s view that the special interest of St Martin’s rested largely on its being the only and unaltered work of an internationally distinguished architect, that it had remained unchanged since completion, and that it was Webb’s only surviving work in an untouched state.
The petitioners identified fundamental problems of accessibility which prevented many individuals from entering or using the church in its current state. Twelve steep steps needed to be navigated to achieve the one access to the constructing.
For reasons of accessibility, longstanding members of the congregation could not attend services, members of the family had missed weddings, funerals, and christenings of close relatives, and choirs, music groups, schools, and other organisations had curtailed their use of the church.
Visitors drawn to the historic and architectural significance of the church, and people with disabilities, had to stay outside. The current arrangements caused embarrassment, distress, indignity, and a way of exclusion, the petitioners reported.
The Victorian Society said that the doorway to the church was “fastidiously articulated to supply an architecturally interesting and interesting introduction to the constructing”, and that the access proposals would introduce a recent and highly conspicuous element on to essentially the most outstanding a part of the constructing and detract from the simplicity of Webb’s original entrance.
The Victorian Society said that the petitioners should further explore the opportunity of introducing a recent accessible entrance within the “less sensitive” western elevation under the stained-glass “Paradise Window”.
The Chancellor considered the case throughout the Duffield principles set out by the Court of Arches and decided that implementing the petitioners’ access proposals would result in a high degree of harm to the church as a constructing of special architectural or historic interest.
The access lift “can be a fabric departure from the presently unaltered whole of this unique Grade I listed constructing”, he said, and “can be recognisable as a separate and identifiably recent feature of the constructing”.
That high degree of harm was not outweighed by the high degree of public profit that will result from the proposed works, the Chancellor concluded. This couldn’t be thought to be an exceptional case, he said, since there remained a real and never yet exhausted prospect of securing comparable advantages at a lesser cost to the church’s character and significance.
A potentially less harmful alternative proposed by the Victorian Society had not been explored, partly owing to a misunderstanding over rights related to the adjoining automotive park.
The Chancellor refused the petitioners’ application under the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules for leave to appeal because he didn’t consider that an appeal had any prospect of success or that there was another compelling reason that it needs to be heard.
