Building a Brighter Future

We carried out a major redevelopment of the Church Centre during 2004. If you are interested in booking rooms in this new Church Centre, please click here: Room Bookings. You also can take a PhotoTour of the Church Centre.

- Redeveloping our premises -

How the front of the Church Centre might look
How the Church Centre was expected to look after
the Redevelopment Project


Redeveloping our premises

When the Redevelopment Team started work in March 2001, they had a fairly loose brief to look at how we could change our buildings to improve the way in which we use them for God's work. We knew that we would have to work on security and acess for the disabled but did not know how this would be realised in bricks and mortar. Twenty months later we foud that it would be realised not in bricks but in glass!

Most of 2003 was taken up with doing design work, getting council approvals and requesting bids from contractors.

On Sunday 14 December 2003, a Special Church Meeting took the decision to place a contract for the Redevelopment Project building works with Farnrise Construction Ltd. Work began on Monday 2 February 2004. It was scheduled to last 32 weeks and the official opening ceremony took place as planned at the outset on Saturday 20 November 2004.

We started building in early 2004 and finished that autumn on schedule and within budget.

The Official Reopening of the buildings took place on Saturday 20 November 2004 with an events to which we invited many representatives from the surrounding community. The ribbon was cut by our Minister (Rev Richard Littledale) and the Mayor of Richmond upon Thames (Councillor Pat Parsons). There was a special service of dedication for the new building at 10.30am the following day (Sunday 21 November 2004) with Rev Nigel Wright (Spurgeon´s College) preaching.

By harnessing the energy and ideas of the whole church membership to the creativity of our architect, Derek Kemp of Church Projects Ltd, we created a wonderful design which links a large glass front to a glass-roofed atrium. The effect has been to open up the church to the community as people can see right into our main living space. They can also see into the worship area as we worship there during our services.


The Redevelopment Team

The Redevelopment Team consisted of a variety of people with different backgrounds and skills, who did their best to make this building project a reality. The members of the Team are pictured below.

Mike Wilkinson
Mike Wilkinson
Neil Chapman
Neil Chapman
Derek Wood
Derek Wood
Steph Wilkinson
Steph Wilkinson
Pam Chapman
Pam Chapman
Vince Grealy
Vince Grealy
Trevor King
Trevor King

See also: The History of our Buildings | Virtual Baptist Church Tour