St Saviour’s Church in Bath has completed their ambitious building project to create a ‘Community Hub’, with four rooms on offer to the wider community from across the city.
The centre was opened by The Right Reverend Peter Hancock, Bishop of Bath and Wells yesterday afternoon.
Nearly £400,000 was raised for the project and the work was carried out by Emerys Builders.
A free community open day will be taking place on 8th October, with children’s activities in the afternoon and coffee and lunches available before.
The church website was also recently relaunched and can be visited here: www.stsaviours.org.uk.
The ‘St Saviour’s Community Hub’ work included modernising the ground floor and kitchen, providing a servery, adapting the space at gallery level on the first floor to make three rooms and including a lift for easy access.
In January this year, the congregation had to leave St Saviour’s in Larkhall, built in 1832, to enable the exciting internal development to take place.
Many groups have used the facilities including Guides, singing groups, keep fit, community day club, toddlers and the regular Friday Fairtrade coffee morning.
The facilities are also used by the church’s own youth and children’s groups. More are hoped to join with the enlarged facilities.
The church say they are grateful to those that hosted groups and services during the building work including Larkhall URC, St. Saviour’s Infant School, the Rose and Crown, Zest Properties and Cloud Nine Coffee Shop.
Revd Michael Norman, Rector of St Saviour’s, said: “We have had plans to adapt the church to make facilities for children, youth and community groups for 15 years.
“Then the parapets, started to fall down. We had to raise money to replace them. After that, bits of the pinnacles on the tower started dropping off!
“But over the last year, donations from individuals, trusts and charities have enabled us to realise our dream.”
“The icing on the cake will be an additional fourth room on a second floor making use of the spacious dimensions up near the roof. The view from there of the rest of the church 30 feet below is amazing!”