Room for Improvement
As a custom, nowadays "refreshments" are served after most Services - tea or coffee and biscuits - but there is no water supply in the Church, no facility for washing up, no convenient storage, nor for serving. Also, with the fixed pews, the "circulation space" is vey restricted; people like to wander around and to chat in different groups.
Many Churches now have a toilet, and if water supply and drainage are to be installed, that would be an added desirable extra.
The Church is used for PCC meetings; and there is a "play area" for small chldren, but these are not "user-friendly".
In recent years, the Church has been floodlit during December, but the lighting has been a temporary arrangement - "it would be nice" to have a proper permanent installation, and for the Church to be lit up more often.
The floor has taken considerable wear over the centuries. In the 1990s the floor was carpeted, which hid the floor (and the gravestone), but the carpetting was very worn, and following the theft of the lead guttering in the valley between the Nave and the North Aisle, they got soaked, so had to go.
The heating system is "beyond the end of its useful life" and is expensive to run; the lighting similarly - and that expression was also used by the piano tuner about the piano.
There is a diagonal crack in the North Wall starting at the top of the door opening.
There are some ancient Jacobean pews in the North side of the Church, which are a "treasure" and will be kept. but the other pews in the nave and the South side were installed in 1866; they are of pine, quite plain, and relatively cheap - it is likely that, by the time work reached the stage of installing new pews, money was running a bit short ! These pews are not very comfortable, and being fixed there is no flexibility; also, the centre aisle is quite narrow for two people to walk abreast.
