We’re pleased to welcome Allchurches Trust, one of the UK’s largest grant-making trusts, as our latest Heritage Alliance member. Allchurches Trust gives out more than £13 million a year to a wide range of churches, charities and community groups. Its funds come from its ownership of Ecclesiastical Insurance, the specialist insurance group with which many THA members will be familiar. This makes Allchurches the largest source of private funds for churches and cathedrals with many of its grants helping congregations to repair historic fabric and facilitate wider community use.
Allchurches Trust joins THA at a time when funding for churches and cathedrals is the focus of a DCMS review, a Church of England Cathedrals Working Group and is also subject to changes being brought in by the HLF.
Sir Philip Mawer, Chairman of Allchurches Trust, said: “We are delighted to be joining the Heritage Alliance. The contribution of churches and cathedrals to our nation’s heritage and the social and spiritual benefit that church groups deliver for their communities is now widely and rightly recognised. It is the reason why so much attention is currently focused on finding sustainable support for them. Allchurches Trust looks forward to continuing to play an important role in the dynamic mix of public and private funders on which so many wonderful projects rely.”
In their most recent funding round, Allchurches Trust has awarded £360,000 to 73 projects including repairs to St Botolph’s Church, Boston, reputedly England’s largest parish church and currently on the Historic England Heritage at Risk Register, the Edgar Tower, the early 13th century gateway of Worcester Cathedral, also on the Heritage at Risk Register, parapets and pinnacles at York Minster and a new six-dome roof for the extraordinary St Teresa of the Child Jesus Catholic Church in Princes Risborough, designed by an Italian architect in 1938