New Rainwater goods and Drainage Repairs
St Peter’s is a glorious Grade I listed church with evidence of a Norman chancel. Unfortunately, it is suffering from a great deal of damp for a variety of reasons, and to cap it off the choir stalls had collapsed due to dry rot.
Following a successful application to the Covid-19 Emergency Heritage at Risk Response Fund, we were able to address these issues and make a number of improvements. This included carrying out a CCTV camera survey of the entire drainage system and realising it was completely blocked – no wonder the choir stalls had collapsed.
The works were quite extensive and involved replacing a number of failed drain runs. What we found was that the entire drainage system joined up into one pipe which then discharged through the boundary wall and onto the village green. At this point the churchwarden came out and showed us an old engraving clearly showing a village pond, and the outlet. All that is now required is to reinstate the pond!
Other works involved repairing the nave roof so it now has a watertight abutment detail with the tower, and repairs to the aisle roofs both of which had defects.
All in all St Peter’s should begin to dry out, and a well worthwhile project carried out.
