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Dear Neighbour,

I write to give you a brief update on the development of St James’ Church, Christleton— a project that began in 2019, and involves the construction of a small extension in the NW corner of the church  (housing toilets and a kitchen) and a reordered nave area inside the church to deliver flexible space for community activities (you can download the full details from our website detailed below).

Our contractor, Grosvernor Construction Ltd, is due on site for 28/9/26. The project is scheduled to complete in February 2027, 20 weeks after its start date.  There will be a contractor compound located at the east end of the church car park. This will inevitably impact the number of available parking spaces for church visitors, which I should be grateful are kept free for this purpose, please. We are told that most disruption will be within the first eight weeks …

Our target is still around £600K for the 'New Beginnings' development project. We have raised an amazing £525K so far, and have further grants in the application process, and of course donations and fundraising continue. So 'Nearly There'! Please help us get over the line. Building work will start soon.

THANK YOU !   

St James' Church played host on Friday evening to the Kelsborrow Choir. It was great to see them return to St James' Church. The Choir provided an evening of music from famous stage and screen productions such as Les Misérables, and Evita together with wonderful renditions of hit songs such as "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" amongst many others. This event was supporting the "St James' New Beginnings Church Development Project". The evening raised over £800 (including a raffle) which again was such an astonishing amount!

(Photo credit: web admin) - image used with kind permission from Kelsborrow Choir

It was a very enjoyable evening with some wonderful organ improvisations and a very apt version of "Three blind mice" played in a Mozart style. It was very apt because the conductor/director who played the improvised piece did not realise that earlier last year St James' Church organ actually did play …

Many thanks to all who came to the St James' Church Summer Garden party 2 weeks ago. It turned out to be a particularly hot summers day which included some deliciously prepared food. Despite a rather shaky start to the afternoon caused by a road incident which unfortunately did prevent a few coming along, the event was very successful and enjoyable!

The figures are now in!  We raised £900 which is an astonishing amount and will go towards the St James' Church Development Fund. This event attracted 50 people.

We can also announce too that Janet & John's Coffee Morning raised an amazing amount of £671.80 which will also go towards the St James' Church Development Fund and was attended by 45 people.

St James' Church and PCC would like to thank everyone who helped to bring these events together without which these funds would not have been raised.

Thankyou …

The PCC of St James' Church would like to thank everybody who came to the concert which was held at St James' Church in aid of the Church Project Development on Saturday 12th April. Serenity Fisher, Michael Ronstadt, Bill Malkin & John Sylvester put on a terrific performance with a superb variety of styles of music!

Initial indications are that after ticket sales, fees & raffle tickets we raised in excess of £500 with a turnout of 120. This was indeed a thoroughly enjoyable and  successful evening and we hope that you will join us in future events to support this pivotal period in the history of our community!

We would also like to thank everybody who was involved behind the scenes, and would like to extend our thanks to all those who contributed prizes to the raffle held in the draw during the interval.
 
On behalf of the …