With your gift, we can stand ready to help our churches in their hour of need.
As an independent, non-denominational charity, we care for more than 60 redundant places of worship across England and Wales. There are many more that need our help.
We rely on the generous support of individuals — through membership, donations and legacies — to help us ensure that these irreplaceable buildings, shaped by the hands of countless generations, will survive for countless more generations to come.
These are places where, for centuries, people celebrated and sang, worshipped and worked, where they silently poured out their hopes and fears. They are at the heart of our national and local identity — places where you can hear centuries of faith in the cold stone and feel the slow passing of time.
Legacies help us provide a future for redundant places of worship. Your legacy gift will help us to save more churches, to retain them as public spaces, and to maintain the churches in our care for those who come after us.
These churches are our humble heritage. They are ancient. They are ours. They are steeped in memory, and the only monument to the lives of hundreds of people that history has forgotten.
Legacies enable us to take on more churches, to help us tackle serious repair projects, and allow us to plan what we can save this year and the next.
Your gift is to future generations, ensuring these places of solace, enjoyment and inspiration will survive.
Friends of Friendless Churches Director, Rachel Morley
St Mary Magdalene’s, Boveney, Buckinghamshire is precisely one of the buildings the Friends of Friendless Churches was formed to save. There is no danger of Long Melford church or Beverley Minster being pulled down, but Boveney’s medieval church would undoubtedly have been demolished, or would have collapsed, if the FoFC had not saved it.
A legacy from Joseph McCrindle enabled us to complete extensive repairs to the exceptional timber tower here. We could mend the walls and the windows.
This transformed the church from one which was locked … to one which is open daily and is visited and loved by countless people.
Rescuing the fascinating ancient church of St Lawrence’s in Gumfreston, Pembrokeshire from danger of complete ruin has been the biggest undertaking in our history. In addition to extensive structural repairs, which were carried out from 2023 to 2024, we have commissioned expert conservation of the church’s medieval wall paintings.
In the 1980s, a rare 15th-century wall painting was discovered in the nave. This fragile survivor depicts either St Lawrence or Christ of the Trades, both rare images in medieval Welsh wall painting. Excitingly, more paintings have recently emerged. However, centuries of incursion by ivy and rainwater have left these paintings — and others that may still be beneath water-damaged paint — in an extremely fragile condition.
We are delighted to have received a bequest towards this costly restoration project, and are excited to see what secrets the church has to reveal over the months to come.
St Mary’s, Sturmer in Essex has a deep past. The earliest parts of the building date from the 11th century, but by 2023, it closed for worship and its future was uncertain. Grade I listed, with Norman sculpture and intricately carved medieval roof timbers, we needed to step in to prevent a future where the church was sold for conversion and removed from the public realm.
We are now in the process of adopting St Mary’s and planning the significant repairs. The roofs of handmade red clay tiles need to be relaid and the rainwater goods need to be overhauled to continue to keep water out. The below ground drainage system needs investigation and improvement. We must mend the glazing to the windows and restore the supporting ironwork (saddle bars, ferramenta, etc). We need to consolidate the flint and pebble rubble walls with lime mortar, and stitch in new brickwork to the early 16th-century porch.
There’s a lot to do, and with your support we can do it. Together, we can keep St Mary’s in good condition and keep it open for everyone to enjoy for years to come.
Please download our Legacies brochure to learn more about how to remember the Friends of Friendless Churches in your Will.
