All Souls for all souls - a neighbourhood centred meetings and community venue

Since 2007 the CCT's Regeneration Taskforce have been working with local community leaders to transform an outstanding but unused Grade II* listed All Souls Church in Bolton, for the benefit of all who live and work locally.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nearly ready to go (part 2)

The tenders for the construction work are about to be sent out which should mean the building phase of the project will be underway by early 2012. The estimate is for an 18 month build period meaning the new All Souls will open to the public from mid 2013.

The All Souls Trust - the charity that will lease and operate the building when it opens - have been working hard to establish themselves and the Trustees visited The Monastery in Manchester recently to learn how they have developed their venue. One of the key lessons was that moving from project development to project delivery requires an enormous shift and there were lots of lessons (and mistakes!) to try to learn from. The Trustees will be looking to learn from more projects over the coming months.

Video: Repairing the roof

We have made a short film looking at some of the issues and challenges in repairing the All Souls roof. The project’s historic buildings surveyor Alan Gardner dons his overalls to help highlight some of the work.

 

 

Project background: A local vision - a place to meet, learn and share

All Souls is set to become a modern, multi-functional space for the local community and people of Bolton. It aims to be a truly ground breaking national flagship project that will turn a disused historic church into a community centre for all local people of all faiths or none.

The Trust is working with the local community, through the committee of the All Souls Community Centre (ASCCC), to create a centre of activity for the neighbourhood and wider town which will operate as a service centre and training, learning and performance space.

All Souls will also host a cutting - edge multi-media exhibition telling the stories of Boltonians both today and throughout the town’s history.

 

 

 

A taste of some memories of All Souls

Reaching out

A series of events were held in 2009 to give people a chance to see what lay hidden behind the doors, and to ask what they thought the building could offer them and their community.

Watch the video for a flavour of one of these days!

 

People came to share their memories and photographs, try out heritage craft skills like stonemasonry, and have a go at some of the activities and opportunities that could be on offer from this building in the future.

As well as being a fun chance to see the building used in a different way - with falcons and owls flying inside the church - there was a chance to meet neighbours, share ideas, and think about what a future All Souls might look like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From pews to pods - multi-million pound lottery support

At the end of September 2009, The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) confirmed a grant of £3.3million for the project. This money will transform the currently redundant 19th-century building into a state-of-the-art facility providing training, education, youth activities, and health and welfare services to the local community.

Restoration plans include taking out the existing pews and replacing them with a community centre - made up of two ‘pods’ that will sit within the church building - "a building within a building" - which will help leave the historic fabric largely untouched.

These innovative new structures will be the first of their kind in the UK, with high-level walkways giving people a unique perspective on All Souls’ architecture and stained glass windows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An area dedicated to the history of the building and the local area will give the town’s diverse population an opportunity to explore and understand the church and its role within the community more fully.

News from the project

Working cotton mill roots

All Souls Church is a vast Victorian church built in 1878-81 under the patronage of the Greenhalgh brothers, local mill owners with a strong evangelical faith. It was constructed at a time when the industrial population was growing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The parish was created in 1879 to serve the mill’s workforce who lived in the terraced streets around the church.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The church was designed by Paley and Austin, two of Lancashire’s most prolific church architects and designers of some of the period’s most impressive Gothic revival churches.

Read about All Souls' beginnings

Equality and care for all

Paley and Austin designed this building to the forward-thinking Greenhalgh brothers' desires - the large congregation, all 800 of them, were to have free seating (many churches charged a rent for their pews at this time).

All pews were designed to be the same throughout, so no person was seen to be more important than the next, and all could see the east end unobstructed - unlike many similar buildings of this size there are no pillars within the space.

The Greenhalgh's also had the health and welfare of the churchgoers in mind - the windows were designed high up in the walls, so that the seating would be free from chilling draughts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the middle of the 20th century, the cotton industry had declined, and the congregation had shrunk so much that the church had to close.

The Greenhalgh mill has long gone and the church has now been closed for 23 years - vandalised and little visited, it is in dire need of the new lease of life that this project will bring.

 

Take a trip to All Souls