Re: St Mary, Lawford (Chelmsford Consistory Court; Cameron Ch. October 1990)

The incumbent and churchwardens of a partly mediaeval church (listed as Grade 1) sought a faculty for the construction of an extension to the north aisle comprising an entrance hall, meeting room, vestries, kitchen, toilets and storage room with the consequential removal and repositioning of monuments. Five parishioners were parties opponent. The Chancellor held that there was a need for vestries and toilet facilities (which apart from an inadequate vestry had previously been lacking) and for a meeting room. It was important to integrate the next generation into chuch life and by bringing the Sunday School and young people's groups to a meeting room linked to the church there was a real prospect of achieving
this. The design of the extension, which had the approval of the DAC, the local planning authority and English Heritage, was, on the evidence of those with expertise in aesthetic matters, pleasing and sensitive. There was no need for the exhumation of human remains, because the foundations were to be of raft construction. It was appropriate to permit the respositioning of the monuments, there being no objection from persons claiming a legal interest in any of them. The petition ought not to be dismissed because it would involve the felling of one tree and the pruning of others; but this work was to be carried out in an expert way and subject to the necessary consent for felling from the Diocesan Parsonages Board. A faculty was granted subject to further conditions relating to the use of the meeting room (which was not to be let to any outside body) and the repositioning of the monuments.

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(1991) 2 Ecc LJ 229