A hole where the vicar stood: how Forncett raised £850,000 for a 1,000-year-old church
Villagers in Forncett, Norfolk, raised about £850,000 through bake sales and lottery grants to repair St Peter's, a round-tower church built around the year 1000, and on Sunday it reopened with the pews full.
The pews at St Peter's in Forncett, Norfolk, were full on Sunday morning. People stood holding service sheets, and the red-and-white tape that had been strung around the pulpit for years was gone. 2
The service marked the end of a repair job the village has been paying for since 2019. The bill came to about £850,000. 2
The church has stood at the junction of Low Road and Aslacton Road for roughly a thousand years. 27
Its tower is round, a shape found almost only in East Anglia. 5 The parish history dates this tower to about AD 1000 and calls it the best Saxon round tower in England. 1
The nave and aisles beside it are 14th and 15th century. A west door leads into the tower, which holds a rare ancient staircase and a ring of six bells. 1
What was wrong
The condition report St Peter's commissioned in 2018 was bad enough that volunteers set up the Friends of St Peter's the following year to campaign for the building. 3
By then the church had holes in its roof and cracks in its walls. Slates were falling off. The tape kept visitors away from the pulpit and from the walls. 2
Birds nested inside. "We had a hole where the vicar stood in the pulpit," said Gillian Barnes, a former churchwarden. 2
Historic England put St Peter's on its heritage at-risk register in 2019, where it stayed for seven years. 2
Terry Hickman Smith, who managed the repairs for the village, said: "If it had gone on much longer it would have been unrepairable." 2
Work began in November 2024 and finished in March this year. It re-slated the nave and chancel roofs, repaired masonry and flintwork, replaced a roof covering and installed new drainage. 2
Where £850,000 comes from
The Friends raised more than £50,000 themselves. They sold cakes, ran quizzes, held Christmas markets, opened village gardens and put on barbecues. 24
Grants covered nearly £800,000. The largest was £631,462 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, awarded in August 2024. 24
Two earlier awards paid for the surveys and the emergency work. Historic England gave £24,000 in 2021, and the Heritage Fund £33,274 in 2022. 4
Other donors included the Headley Trust, the Round Tower Churches Society and the Garfield Weston Foundation. The Norfolk Churches Trust, the Bishop of Norwich's fabric fund and St John's College, Cambridge gave as well. 4
What the money saved
Among the medieval survivals is a late-15th-century alabaster tomb chest, carved for Thomas Drake and his wife. 1
The bench ends are a Victorian set in the 15th-century style, carved with the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Works of Mercy. They may be the work of the Ipswich carver Henry Ringham. 1
Four stained-glass windows date from between 1854 and 1892. A memorial inside recalls a cousin of Dorothy Wordsworth, who lived in Forncett from 1788 to 1794. 1
Round towers are an East Anglian specialism. The Round Tower Churches Society counts about 181 in Britain, of which 126 are in Norfolk, 42 in Suffolk, six in Essex and two in Cambridgeshire. 5
Historic England says the care of nearly 15,000 listed places of worship in England rests entirely on local congregations and communities. 6
Its research in 2025 included a poll in which only 11% of the public knew that the duty sits with local people. 6
Anya Wallace was married at St Peter's, where her father had been churchwarden. "We had a candlelit wedding, when the church was looking quite good," she said. "Today, it's looking even better." 2
Becky Ryan, there with her mother Gillian Barnes, said: "It seemed quite an overwhelming task and now it's all completed... it's just amazing." 2
Barnes had the last word on the drains. "We've got drain envy now with other parishes because we've got some beautiful drains," she said. 2
What is still to do
The roof and the walls are done. Money for decoration, heating, disabled access, toilets and a kitchen is still being raised. 3
The project also paid for a film about the village, "Rook over Forncett", to be shown in the church later this year. Three heritage and nature trails are already open. 3
Hickman Smith said the church had "really benefited". The village, he said, likes to think "it will be here for the next 1,000 years". 2
St Peter's is open again. Visiting details and the parish's donation page are listed on its A Church Near You entry. 7
References
- 1St. Peter's Church
forncetthistory.net
- 2
This story was produced automatically by a channel. One sentence is all it takes for Neodrop to keep producing for you.