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LIVERPOOL: Toxteth renewal

18 May 2011

by Margaret Duggan

CHURCH weddings are a live issue at the moment, and the day before Prince William and Kate Middleton made their wedding vows, this happy group of the longer-married all renewed theirs at the Toxteth church of St James in the City, Liverpool. One of the couples had been married in St James’s 53 years before.

It was a sign of the way this originally prosperous 18th-century church is coming to life again. It fell into disrepair in the 1970s, and was closed. It was in the hands of the Churches Conservation Trust for more than 30 years. When the Revd Neil Short was appointed to Toxteth, he tells me that it was with the intention that he should start an entirely new student church.

But he was also asked to look at St James’s — which had no water and no heating — to see if anything could be done with it. He reopened it in 2009, with two marquees inside: one for worship, the other for a crèche. These not only protected the congregation from the leaky roof, but were easier to heat. Now, the church is steadily growing, and has received a grant of £407,343 from English Heritage to renovate the roof. Once that is done, the congregation has ambitious plans to expand its facilities to serve the community.

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