BY NOW you may have heard or seen the result of our efforts to obtain permission to carry on with our renovation scheme at the Abbey Church. Unfortunately, the Chancellor of Lincoln Diocese has turned down our petition to obtain the necessary faculty. It is a very complex application, not least because we have been working towards making the application for almost five years. In a written judgement running to many pages, the Chancellor set out his reasons for not granting the petition.

The main reason for denying permission concerns the proposed access between the church and the boiler house/toilet block. Everyone accepts that in all probability there was a passageway running between the base of the north tower and the boiler house. It is believed that the boiler house is situated on what was originally the parlour of the monastic buildings. The passage existed either at this time or when the parlour was converted into part of the Abbey House built by the Pochin family after they had purchased the monastic buildings following the dissolution of the Abbey by Henry VIII in 1536.

Even though it is accepted that the passage existed and was probably blocked up in the restoration work at the Abbey in 1868, the Chancellor has refused to exercise his discretion to allow the re-opening of the passageway. His reason is that although the passage existed, the restoration work in 1868 was such that the blind arcading that replaced the passageway blends in very closely with the blind arcading found around the rest of the west end of the Abbey Church. In his opinion, this means that it would be wrong to spoil it by re-opening the passageway. He argues further that it would be wrong to disturb the medieval stone work in the wall where the passageway existed.

You may well have already spotted the flaw in this thinking. How can it be wrong to disturb medieval stonework that has already been disturbed? It should further be pointed out that at no point in our deliberations with the Diocesan Advisory Committee (which helps parishes to prepare for their faculty petitions to the Chancellor) was this made an issue. The primary issue all the way along was whether such a passageway existed. The aesthetic (or otherwise) merits of the 1868 restoration were secondary. We spent thousands of pounds on expert archaeological advice to eventually prove beyond reasonable doubt that such a passageway existed. Even the Chancellor accepts its existence so what appears to have happened is a rather significant changing of the planning goalposts.

The churchwardens, parochial church council and I all feel aggrieved at the way English Heritage and the Diocesan Advisory Committee have handled our application. We are now considering our options. The Chancellor accepts that there is a need for indoor toilets and a servery area. Consequently, he has recommended that we find another way of achieving it, calling our attention to English Heritage's 2008 suggestion that we cut through the north aisle wall between the western-most window and the tower. This has already been explored by our architect and we believe that he is correct in saying that the structural integrity of the building as well as the aesthetic appearance would be compromised. A second possibility would be to take out the western-most window (or part of it) and place a door in the wall in its place.

Whilst on the face of it this might seem a good option, the reality is that it might take another year or two to prepare and obtain a new faculty petition. There is no guarantee that this would be successful, as once again the Diocesan Advisory Committee would be involved, as would English Heritage and the local planning authority. Our experiences with all these bodies up to this point has been less than satisfactory, and I for one am not confident in achieving a satisfactory outcome.

Depending on the equation between the cost of appealing the Chancellor's decision, and the cost in architect's fees to prepare a new scheme, we may feel that the best way forward is to make the appeal. In addition to the peculiar logic in the Chancellor's judgement mentioned above, there are several other grounds upon which we might be able to base a successful appeal to the Court of Arches. This is the body in London that would hear our appeal and make its ruling.

The main thing is that although we were initially downhearted over the Chancellor's judgement, we all believe that dropping the scheme in some form or other is not an option. It is therefore, very much a case of watch this space.

Your friend and priest
Father Chris Atkison

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