Improving St. John's Visitor Experience

Our vision

Scroll through the images below to see where we plan improvements, with examples of what we envisage our visitor experience might be.

Our Proposal

St John’s Church is open every day as a place for prayer, contemplation and quiet reflection. Each week, some forty visitors come from the nearby and popular Holy Cow Cafe, just across the paddock, from our village and also from afar and our visitor count is increasing. We are keen to vastly improve both accessibilty, inclusivity and visibility – to make it as welcoming as possible for all.

We are proposing to improve access at the entrance gate to make it fully inclusive, especially for wheelchair users, and to provide a ramp into the north porch. For the porch itself, we plan to replace the iron gates with a modern glass door, so that the interior doors, which will be refurbished, can be left open to provide a welcoming vista through the church. At the same time, will will refurbish the porch itself. We also need to replace the crumbling north wall of the churchyard, which is currently a health & safety concern. We are looking to install railings as this will provide a more cohesive area in conjunction with the paddock next door.

Update June 2024:

There is much to do and you can read the full submission that we will need to send to The DAC (who have responsibility for the care of Church buildings and churchyards within our Diocese), by clicking the button below. However, more pressing matters have surfaced since we first proposed this venture, and our New Life Project is currently taking precedence.

Church Hall Heating
24th June - 1st July

We are delighted to announce that the Church Hall heating is being upgraded over the coming days and the hall may be closed on various days to enable the works to be completed safely. 

This is the first element of our New Life Project – with grateful thanks to all of our supporters.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

Refurbishment
Thursday 2nd November

Planning to visit St. John’s Church, Chilcompton? Please note that the building will be closed to visitors on Thursday 2nd November to enable further work to the refurbishment of the chancel floor to be carried out safely. Thursday’s Holy Communion will be held the Church Hall. The church will be open again to visitors from Friday 3rd November.

We apologise for any inconvenience.