Friends Meeting House
St Helens, Merseyside
The house has a wonderful atmosphere of calm, the people using it for worship are warm and friendly, and visitors leave feeling an inner peace.
Holy Trinity Church was built in 1857 to serve what was then an industrial and mining community. The architects were W & J Hay. The construction material chosen for Holy Trinity is unusual in the extreme: copper slag, a very hard mineral by-product of the local chemical industry. The blocks are roughly hexagonal in shape although no two are exactly the same, with the walls sometimes described as "crazy-paved". The church contains the second-oldest surviving use of glued laminated timber beams in the world. The church is open for community events most days of the week and several evenings. Members of the public are welcome to drop in and have a cup of tea any time the church is open.
Top tips from feedback:
- Get the right team in place - both from within the church and the professionals.
- Remember that something will go wrong - it always does. Keep calm, there is always a solution. It doesn't mean you've "failed" or did a bad job of planning the project.