St. Mary's Church, Amport

St Mary's Church is in the benefice of Amport, Grateley, Monxton and Quarley. There are no remains of the original church, which was probably built of timber and thatch. The present church was built of knapped flint in the Decorated style during the years 1320 to 1330. It was luckily completed before the Black Death reached the south of England. Amport's priest was one of many who died of the disease during the outbreak of 1348/9.

The advowson of this church was given in 1217 to the Canons of Chichester cathedral by William de St John, son of Adam de Port after whom the village was named, and still remains with Chichester Cathedral. The first record of an incumbent at St Mary's is in the register of Bishop John de Pontoise of Winchester which, as its very first entry in 1282, notes the institution of Thomas de Anne to the vicarage of Anne, as the village was known at that time. The church was extended and considerably restored in 1866 and re-roofed in 1988.

There are more pictures and architectural notes by Astoft (www.astoft.co.uk/amport.htm).

Services for February

News

Services in the Four Parishes - February 2012

With the departure of Chris Pettet, we wish to assure churchgoers that the usual services will be held in the four parish churches. The Team Rector, Chris Rankine, has arranged for all our usual programme of services to be covered by himself and the Team Vicar from the Wallops, Vanessa Cole, or by other priests. A programme has been planned up until Easter and the times will be published monthly as usual.

This is an extra load on Chris and Vanessa, when you consider that the team was formed for Chris Pettet to support Chris Rankine in his large parish, rather than the other way round, so please do continue to give them your full support.

There is no news yet on when, or if, Chris will be replaced, as in the best of circumstances it is always a long process. We have started this process by writing to the Bishop to ask for his help and support.
Church Wardens of Amport, Grateley, Monxton and Quarley

Celebration of the Completion of Amport Church Building Project - December 2011

The building work at the church is now nearing completion and the finishing touches should be made in the next three weeks.

To celebrate the completion of this work, The Venerable Michael Harley, Archdeacon of Winchester, has kindly agreed to bless the new work at the 11 am Communion Service on 18th December.

Everyone is cordially invited to attend this occasion and we would especially welcome all those who gave so generously to the Lily Fund to celebrate the completion of the project they helped to achieve. There will be refreshments afterwards.
Richard Unwin

Amport Church Building Work - September 2011

We have now chosen the contractors for the construction of the disabled access toilet and a kitchenette for the church and they will be starting work on 22nd August. It is expected that the work will take about 10 weeks, and although there will be some disruption as the area by the entrance and the path are dug up to lay drains and the water supply, the main construction work will be in the corner between the porch and the churchyard wall, so will not cause too many problems.

When it is finished we will have completed most of the improvements we set out to include when David Mallam initiated the Lily Appeal in 2005. These include renovation of the nave floor, which was rotten and collapsing, essential work on the outer fabric of the tower, removal of the pews and replacing them with comfortable chairs and construction of the Garden of Remembrance. Including the current work, we will have spent about £135,000 to ensure the structure is in good order and to bring the church up to a standard suitable, not only for its primary religious purposes, but also as a useful community venue for a variety of social functions suitable for a church. To achieve this we raised a total of £125,000, including £35,000 from church funds, mostly left to us in a legacy in 1996.

There is still some further work which needs to be done to improve the drainage round the church to prevent dampness inside, to carry out repairs to certain windows and to external stonework, but as we are digging quite deeply into our savings for the current work, this will have to wait for further funding. If you are thinking of re-writing your Will at this time, please don’t forget the church.

In the December 2009 edition of the Parish News I gave an update on the plans to add a disabled access toilet to Amport Church. At the time this had been approved by Winchester Diocese and English Heritage but the TVBC Planning Department had refused planning permission. Over the winter we appealed to the National Planning Inspectorate and have just heard that our appeal has been successful. They have over-ruled the objections of Test Valley, so we are now free to go ahead with the project. It will take a while to finish the detail design, obtain estimates and set up the contract but we hope that work will start in the Spring. 

We have now raised £120,000 for the Lily Fund altogether in the last five years and we have spent £82,000. This means we have £38,000 left in the fund, but still need at least £25,000 to complete the work. Now that we have an approved project we are applying for further grants to enable us to cover this.

Richard Unwin, Amport PCC

Improvements (February 2009)

In 2005 the PCC initiated a programme to make various improvements to Amport church.  Much of the renovation work that was included in the package has now been completed, but the main work, the re-development of the porch to make extra space and adding a kitchenette and a disabled WC, has not.  This brief article is intended to bring you up to date on the progress of the project.

A year or so ago it was realised that we were not going to be able to raise enough money to rebuild the porch as we had planned.  Great efforts have been made by local people and organisations to raise money, but we had always known that funds raised locally would have to be supplemented by outside grants to raise the £175,000 required.  Unfortunately, although some grants were obtained, they were sufficient only to raise about £100,000.  Of this, about £50,000 has already been spent on re-ordering the nave and some major renovation work on the tower.

We therefore explored other options to provide the kitchenette and toilet within the available funds.  The kitchenette was comparatively easy and there was general agreement that a kitchen unit in an oak cabinet, located at the back of the church in the corner opposite the door, would be a satisfactory solution.  However the WC was a more difficult problem and three options were considered.  The first two were inside, either at the back of the church behind a screen, or in the choir vestry.  The first of these would require moving the font and losing some space at the back of the church. The second would take up considerable space in the vestry, which was not popular with the choir.  The third option was to place the WC outside the church, possibly in the corner behind the porch.  There was some doubt that this option would receive approval from the church authorities, but our architect came up with a plan to hide it behind a wall, with an arch giving access to the WC entrance.  Although this was the more expensive option it is generally acceptable and has been approved by the Diocesan Advisory Committee (DAC) which has to approve all work on the church.  The next stage is to obtain planning approval from Test Valley, and they will be making their decision in the next month.  After that we can apply to the Diocese for a Faculty to give us final authority to start work. The plans can be seen on the church notice board or at my house.

The cost of this work is estimated at about £60,000 and we have sufficient money to pay for this now.  However, there is still some outstanding work on the structure of the church, including rework of the drains to prevent damp, and repairs to the stained glass and the stone crosses on the roof.  If we are to retain some reserve funds, we still need to raise about £30,000 to complete all our objectives, and although we intend to approach grant-giving bodies over the next year for help with this, we will have to raise part of it ourselves, so we are not quite out of the woods yet!
Richard Unwin

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