24 CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 Covid-19 Cultural Recovery Fund, and the Listed Places of Worship Roof Repair Fund in 2015. They have also benefited from VAT recovery through the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme. But the degree of uncertainty and contingency attached to these grant sources makes confident future planning difficult. If Anglican churches occupy most of our time and resources, we are keen to help other denominations. The church of Our Lady of Consolation and St Stephen at Lynford, near Thetford, leased to us from the RC Diocese of East Anglia in 2009, has recently been repaired with the benefit of a Covid-19 Cultural Recovery Fund grant. These grants were given against a tight timetable, so only those with advanced plans could benefit. Henry Clutton’s small and splendid church was built in 1878 in the grounds of Lynford Hall (William Burn, 1857–62) by the fabulously wealthy widow Yolande LyneStephens, largely for her own use. She was also the principal funder of the Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Cambridge. Lynford has ornate late gothic details in soft, yellow limestone that is vulnerable to erosion, especially in the openwork parapets and delicate western bellcote. The most fragile elements have been made safe by careful conservation and some stonework replacement. In earlier days Mrs Lyne-Stephens would travel 18 miles to worship at St Mary’s, Thetford, so it was probably at her request that Clutton built into the plinth of the new church salvaged fragments of rare and important late-11th-century Norman sculpture from the ruins of Thetford Priory. Other trusts are involved in the direct care of the county’s churches and chapels.The Norwich Historic Churches Trust, founded in 1973, has 18 city churches. The Churches Conservation Trust has 28 mainly rural buildings and the pioneer Norwich Diocesan Churches Trust has time-limited responsibility for around a dozen. The Friends of Friendless Churches and the Norfolk Historic Buildings Trust have two each. Taken together, these holdings represent about 10 per cent of the churches in Norfolk. These organisations clearly play an important role, but no one can confidently propose that the answer to the present pressing question lies in a significant expansion of their holdings. This would not be practical without new and dramatically increased sources of external finance. It can also be challenging to maintain constructive engagement with communities once a building has been taken over by another institution. This can sometimes weaken the hitherto creative and economically useful funding partnership between local effort and outside help. The priority, therefore, is to increase the support that can keep rural churches in use for worship and community service. The extended use and enjoyment of churches by the whole community is central to their long-term future, and there is plenty of evidence in Norfolk that non-churchgoers are willing to engage with the upkeep of the building and its churchyard. But widespread and sustained local social engagement will not have much chance of growing without a more supportive public funding environment. What is required is a concerted and collaborative effort by church, state and the charitable sector to give more widespread and targeted help. Our current competitive and under-funded mixed economy of grant aid – one that works best for those most able to make use of it – is self-evidently unequal to the task in hand. John Maddison is chairman of the Norfolk Churches Trust. The last 30 years as a practising artist followed his early career in medieval architectural history, the Victorian Society and the National Trust. Some of his art and design in historic buildings can be seen at Ely, St Albans, Westminster Cathedral and Stowe House. Two items, both created in 1998, from the collection of the Lettering Arts Trust: a cast-iron grave marker to John Harrison by Nicholas Sloane and (below) a Welsh slate stele by Andrew Daish
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