We always enjoy participating in Heritage Open Days, but it was particularly inspiring this year to see so many historic buildings open again after an extremely challenging year for heritage.
Why we take part
As a tiny charity, our resources are limited, but our remit is broad: we cover the whole of England and Wales, and our churches are scattered far and wide. HODs is an opportunity to showcase the work we do both to local communities and to visitors from further afield, raising awareness of our charitable objectives and our need to fundraise.
We rescue and repair ancient and beautiful churches because we believe they represent important architectural and cultural heritage and should be conserved for the enjoyment of all. Ultimately, we want people to visit these buildings and appreciate them! HODs is a great way to do this, as it increases our reach beyond those who already know a lot about historic churches and brings them to a much wider audience.
Furthermore, making and sustaining volunteer contacts is vital to us. HODs gives our local volunteers a chance to show off the building they care about so much, which may see very few visitors during the rest of the year. Because our churches are redundant places of worship, there is no active congregation to help look after and fundraise for the building, so we treasure the local people who step forward to do this. HODs is an important opportunity for local friends to meet and recruit potential new volunteers.
In the last few years we decided to make a day of it and have an event. It has been really rewarding. The events have opened the eyes of local people to the church and its beauty.
What we do for HODs
We try to include as many of our English churches as possible in Heritage Open Days and we’re dependent on local volunteers to help us do this. Each church has its own special features, and volunteers are really important in sharing these - they can open your eyes to the architectural curiosities of a church.
Events can be simply volunteer-run open days, talks, or larger occasions that link up with other local historic buildings. Lately, of course, it’s not been possible to host many large events, but we hope to see even bigger and better events happening for HODs in future years.
The difference it makes
Community hub highlight
A highlight of our Heritage Open Days listings is the family-friendly Open Day at Papworth St Agnes in Cambridgeshire. The village is tiny, with only one road in and out, and has no pub, shop or post office. The locals have adopted the church as their community centre, though, and hold harvest suppers and carol services there despite it no longer being an active place of worship.
Heritage Open Day is a real landmark in the village calendar when they welcome visitors from far and wide. In 2021, volunteers embraced the theme of ‘Edible England’ and opened the church with an array of homemade cakes and bread, jams and chutneys for sale. Classic and vintage cars and tractors were on display, along with a treasure hunt for the children. The village bakehouse near the church was open too, with interpretation on its traditional role in producing food for the village. It is so wonderful to see all this come from a church that used to be ’friendless’ and could have been demolished.
Rebecca's top tip!
Don’t assume people won’t be interested – they will! Take advantage of opportunities to promote the event locally in advance; e.g. local Facebook pages. You may well find your local paper will run an article about the event, or even send a photographer or reporter along on the day. It’s always worth asking.
Inspired? Find out more
- Friends of Friendless Churches
- More case studies - Meet other local organisers
- Get involved - Taking part in Heritage Open Days