Dating back some 900 years, All Saints Church is the oldest building in Hartley with a history that traces back to Norman times. Indeed, it is thought that the church was actually built upon the former site of a wooden Saxon church. In order to meet the needs of the local community and spurred on by the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act, the Parochial Church Council developed detailed plans to convert the Grade 1 listed building to include: level access from the road; modern toilet facilities; a refreshments area; a circulating area; and a community meeting room.
To date, the church has raised £290,000 of the £350,00 required to finance this important project and it was this shortfall that led the church to approach local businesses including Syd Bishop & Sons Ltd.
The new extension will require the level of the land to lowered by approximately 0.5 metres to bring it flush with Church Road. This will require the excavation of an area that has been used for burials for more than 600 years and which contains at least 62 known burial plots, all of which will have to be re-interned when the work is complete. “Many of these were ‘shroud’ burials in which no coffin was used so internments often overlap each other,” explains rector, Jim Fletcher “In fact, one of the graves contained one body but four skulls.”
A large part of this work is being funded thanks to the donation by Syd Bishop & Sons Ltd which has used a charitable clause in the Landfill Tax system to help support this important local cause. “Under the current taxation system, we were allowed to contribute up to 6.6 percent of 2007’s Landfill Tax revenue to community needs or charity, provided that we contribute an additional 10 percent on top of that,” explains director Terry Bishop. “To allow us to support some other good causes, we have donated 3.3 percent which was equivalent to £35,535, plus 10 percent which took the total to £39,008. This area has always been good to us as a company and it’s great to be able to give something back to the local community.”
