Chivelstone (St. Sylvester) Church

Description

St Sylvester's Church, Chivelstone - A Church Near You

St Sylvester's Church was closed on the 4th January 2021for many weeks. Major Restoration works are taking place. We are very grateful to the following funders for their support: National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Garfield Weston Foundation, Devon Historic Churches Trust, Allchurches Trust, Beatrice Laing Trust and Devon County Council. We are very excited, our beautiful mediaeval Church has begun its journey of repair and restoration; stopping water ingress in the tower and main walls, Repairing the South Porch and South windows, replacing gutters and installing a toilet and shower and a kitchen if funds will allow. Our rare and beautiful medieval pulpit is to be restored, it is carved from a single trunk of oak. We are now in week eight, the work is progressing very well despite some very rough weather, the days are getting longer, we hope the repointing will soon begin. Week thirteen now, The South Porch has been stabilised with 24 feet piles used to underpin the front walls. The front walls have been rebuilt and straightened up, the cracks have gone. The vestry wall has also been partially rebuilt to repair the cracks. The cement pointing has been removed from the main body of the Church, this is being replaced with lime mortar pointing. The whole Church is covered in scaffolding to enable replacement of gutters and is ready for work on the tower. July 2nd 2021. The builders are now in week 21 of the 44 week contract. The progress is very good. The gutters are fixed and the pointing is now nearly complete on the main body of the Church, this has allowed a lot of the scaffolding to be removed on the East and South side, the work that is complete is looking lovely. The builders are now concentrating on the Tower the whole of which is being repointed, a mamooth task. One of the south windows has been removed to be restored with new mullions and lead work. We had a hard hat day in June, the architect and building manager gave guided tours to small groups of the work in progress. A very successful day, visitors were very impressed.