Historic Buildings

St Andrew, Soham: Building repairs and building skills for a brighter future

Our project will remove Grade I listed St Andrew’s Church, Soham, from the Heritage at Risk Register by carrying out a major programme of building repairs: renewing the lead to the nave, crossing, chancel, north aisle and south porch roofs, repairing stonework, timbers, gutters/downpipes, windows and tower masonry. We aim to achieve carbon net zero by replacing failing gas heating with electric, making the building useable all year round, and helping the organisation become more financially viable. We will build on our community partnerships to strengthen the relevance of the building for local people, through heritage fairs and hard hat tours and by running practical heritage building skills workshops for students from Soham Village College and local builders, giving them hands-on experience of stonework, carpentry, leadwork and blacksmithing, introducing young people to careers in heritage and inspiring them to further training to help to fill the national shortage of skilled heritage craftspeople.