We’re delighted to announce that the Archbishop of York, Rt Revd John Sentamu is to be Patron of our Tulse Hill Neighbourhood Hub. John was Vicar here in Tulse Hill for many years; he is warmly remembered and keeps in touch with a number of people. Several years before that he studied in Cambridge, where our current Vicar, Richard stayed with him overnight before an undergraduate interview.

Archbishop John  led and saw through the renovation of Holy Trinity’s main church building in three phases during the 1980-90s. He also initiated Phase 4, of which our current project will be the fulfillment. At that time, it was another Archbishop of York, Rt Revd Stuart Blanch who was President of the Appeal. Lord Blanch had been a former choir boy here at Holy Trinity.

Archbishop John says, “I am very pleased to let you know that having prayed and fasted about this project, I am very happy to accept your kind invitation.”

You can now help build our neighbourhood hub commission-free when you give by text. This means we get 100% – yes 100% – of your gift, as well as 100% of the Gift Aid bonus, if you pay UK income tax.

It couldn’t be easier.

Simply text:   thsb14 £20 to 70070.

(Substitute your own donation, eg £5, £50, £500)

Your gift will be forwarded to our bank account.

You will also receive a reply text asking whether you would like to Gift Aid the amount. Please do so, if you are eligible!

If you pay your phone by direct debit monthly, your gift will be added to your bill – so be aware that your monthly phone bill may seem unusually large!

If you are on pay-as-you-go, please make sure there is enough credit on your phone card for your gift.

“thsb” stands for “Tulse Hill Straw Bales” and 14 indicates that we want to raise most of our £380,000 in 2014

This free service is provided by Vodafone in partnership with JustGiving.

At the end of January we laid out barrier fencing to show on site where the Hub will go. We were thrilled that our drawings on paper actually fitted where we thought they would on the ground! Over the following weeks the storms blew everything down, which was amazing.  I thought the holes in barrier fencing would prevent that.  Last week Priscilla Watkins, our Project Artist did this painting of the site, looking towards the church from the South West.  The foreground section with trees will be our toilet block.  Through the left hand gap between the trees you can see where our kitchen is planned. Somewhere at the far end will be our Hub entrance. The two yellow lines mark the walls of our strip of Upper Rooms in the roof space.  Click here to see a photo of the site from the other end.

Yesterday, Hendy and Richard laid out the plans for our building in mesh barrier fencing on site. This was done ahead of our site visit with the Diocesan Advisory Committee and others on Tuesday.

We’re glad to say that it all fits on the ground exactly as our drawings say it should!  Not a bad start for amateurs!

The yellow lines – in case you were wondering – mark where our “Upper Rooms” will fir in the roof space, as well as the internal wall of the toilet block.

Once the DAC give us a positive indication of openness to the scheme, we’ll be commissioning the surveys, professional design and drawings.

For some other views click below:

view from kitchen

view from toilets

view along the centre.

On Monday 2nd December Holy Trinity PCC agreed to expand our original plan to include a strip of Upper Rooms in
the roof space of the hall.  This is now seen as an absolutely necessary step in order to get permission for building. Without the extra Upper Rooms, the hall will only partially meet our needs. In short, we would still have to hire space beyond the church plant every week for our Children’s Provision.

Although providing for our own children’s ministry is only part of the vision, it is an important one – ongoing into the future. Our previous plan, which left only the hope of a second building was simply not secure enough.

Building rooms into the roof space will definitely be more expensive, but it will be much more cost-effective than a second building, and it will provide a much neater, more economic solution.  For more information, see Our Most Up-To-Date Plan

With this and other factors in mind, we have revised our fund-raising target to £380,000