Proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus Christ

The Parish Church of St Mary, Atherstone

Project 2000

the Community

One of the features that makes St Mary’s different from other churches of a similar size is its construction. The original church was built of dressed stone blocks (some of the original chancel and the tower which date from the 14th and 15th Century still survive). This would have created a dry and comparatively well insulated building.  Early in the 19th Century, a new Nave was built and joined to the tower which, together with the side aisles created a space that could seat some 1,400 people. However, in order to keep down the cost of such a large building, the walls were constructed of rubble with a facing of small, irregular lumps of granite. Such buildings were much cheaper to construct, allowing more of the hard-raised capital to be used on decoration. It was expected to last no more than 50 to 100 years, whereupon it would be up to future generations to rebuild in an appropriate way. From its completion, the nave has always been cold and damp. The first heating system to be installed was a simple coke boiler. This hot air system was eventually replaced by a gravity fed hot water system with cast iron pipes around the whole building. The coke boiler was replaced in the late 1960’s with a huge gas boiler and an electric pump which, if left on continuously, could achieve a nine degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature above the outside, five foot above the floor (providing all doors were kept closed). It would have cost  £2,300 per month if run continuously and so was only used at weekends. Unlike dressed stone buildings, humidity levels in St Mary’s have, from the earliest times, always been uncomfortably high and the rise and fall in temperature clearly created considerable condensation problems in the roof.
When winter temperatures fell in the early 1990’s to below freezing for some three weeks, it was clear that we would soon have a church that none but the very hardiest of people would come to.