The National Lottery Heritage Fund announces three new funding awards to help tackle some of the key challenges facing places of worship and work towards a brighter and more sustainable future for some of the UK’s oldest and most cherished historic buildings.
The Foundation for Jewish Heritage has been awarded funding for a UK-wide project that will offer support to historic synagogues facing challenges such as declining memberships and limited resources.
The project will pilot ways it can help the people caring for historic synagogues in areas such as building management and maintenance, capacity building and education and outreach, with the aim of rolling the support out across the UK. The Heritage Fund has awarded over £140,000 to enable the project to develop its plans and potentially unlock £1.2m of National Lottery funding.
Enjoyment and understanding of outdoor space around places of worship will be encouraged by the Nature in Sacred Places project. A partnership led by Natural England with the Church of England, Churches Conservation Trust, Bat Conservation Trust and Caring for God’s Acre has been awarded nearly £550,000 of development funding for an 18-month pilot project with a potential delivery grant of £4.2m for a four-year delivery phase.
Working with around 150 religious buildings across England, the project aims to build the awareness, resources and skills needed for volunteers, communities and custodians of religious buildings to take action for nature in their churchyards and outdoor spaces. The project aims to create a strong future for nature in the green space surrounding places of worship by broadening engagement with audiences of all faiths and backgrounds, delivering vital education and training and creating long term plans for nature in sacred places.
Caring for God’s Acre has been awarded support for its plans to transform how burial ground heritage across Wales is secured for future generations and demonstrate how they can become centres of local nature recovery and peaceful, accessible green spaces for communities and visitors.
From Medieval churchyards to expansive Victorian cemeteries, burial grounds across Wales contain some of the nation’s most precious and vulnerable heritage, and many are vital refuges for nature, supporting species and habitats now rare elsewhere in Wales.
As these sites face increasing pressures, the Hafanau Heddwch (Havens of Peace) project will empower local volunteers to take an active role in caring for and celebrating these unique places. It will undertake six pilot projects involving more than 50 burial grounds across Wales focusing on safeguarding and showcasing the wildlife, built heritage and social history they contain. The project has been awarded £325,000 of development funding with a potential delivery grant of nearly £3.8m. It has also received funding from the Church of Wales.
The projects have come as a result of the Heritage Fund’s initiative for places of worship which has challenged the heritage sector to devise and deliver strategic projects at a national and regional level to address long-standing sector-wide issues and funding gaps for places of worship.
In September 2024, the Heritage Fund announced a pot of at least £15m to be invested over the following three years in such projects. In under two years it has now committed just over £17m for eight strategic projects*, including the three being announced today. From the Church of England’s scheme for long-term conservation of historic interiors of churches to Development Trust Association Scotland plans for finding new futures for former places of worship in Scotland, each project is taking proactive and innovative approaches to tackling long-standing heritage issues.
Eilish McGuinness, Chief Executive of The National Lottery Heritage Fund said:
“Places of worship are among our oldest and most cherished heritage. They are hearts of communities, homes to wildlife and parts of countless stories and histories. However they are facing many challenges, and their futures are not always certain.
“We have been encouraging the sector to explore partnerships, innovative ways of working and strategic interventions to proactively address those challenges. The response has been fantastic, and we have so far supported eight ambitious projects which have the potential to make a real and lasting positive impact for the future of places of worship and support our vision for heritage to be valued, cared for, and sustained for everyone, now and in the future.”
Alongside its £17m investment in strategic projects, the Heritage Fund has continued to invest in places of worship through its National Lottery Heritage Grants programme. Grounded in research into the needs and challenges in different areas and nations of the UK, the Heritage Fund has refreshed its approach to supporting places of worship to make strong applications for funding, targeting key areas and redeveloping guidance and resources.
In the past two years, since April 2024, the Heritage Fund has invested over £145m into more than 225 places of worship projects. This investment supports an incredible range of work from building repairs and biodiversity improvements to resilience building and volunteer training.
Those projects include:
The Wren Project at St James’s Piccadilly in London for which today the Heritage Fund is announcing £4.725m of investment. This is a significant boost for the £24million project that will reimagine the Christopher Wren church for the modern day. Alongside restoring the building and surroundings, the project will generate transformational opportunities for volunteers and communities in London and beyond, as it launches a young leaders Changemaker Programme to inspire positive and lasting change. Protecting nature and driving environmental sustainability are core to the project and to St James’s Piccadilly’s ongoing work.
Supporting a community to transform St Monans Auld Kirk in Fife. St Monans Auld Kirk Enterprise (SMAKE), formed by six local residents to acquire the Auld Kirk when the Church of Scotland announced plans to sell it, was awarded development funding of nearly £116,000, with a potential delivery grant of nearly £1.9m, to develop plans to restore the Category A-listed medieval church, one of the oldest in Scotland, and transform it into a social hub, café and heritage destination at the heart of community life.
Enabling St John’s, Doddington in Shropshire to become a gateway to natural and industrial heritage. Sitting high on Titterstone Clee Hill, within the Shropshire Hills National Landscape, the church is in a unique position to engage the local community, walkers and tourists in the heritage of the building and the wider landscape. A £220,000 Heritage Fund grant enabled vital repairs, interpretation and community engagement.
Transforming St Mary’s Church, Finedon in Northamptonshire. The 14th century Grade I Listed church has an 18th century organ believed to have been commissioned for St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle and the Monk’s Cell which houses 14th century manuscripts. However, it lacks useable community space and facilities. Heritage Fund support of nearly £98,000 will alter the church’s West End creating space and facilities to enable the church to become a community hub and host a range of events and exhibitions, boosting its income generation and building a more sustainable future.
Since 1994, The National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded over £1billion to more than 8,200 places of worship projects, enabling vital restoration and conservation of some of the UK’s oldest and most cherished buildings, including facilitating the removal of many from the UK’s ‘At Risk’ registers.
