St Mary's Church Community Centre Appeal 
If you are familiar with St. Mary's Church you will know that there is a small prefabricated building at the rear of the Church. This room is vital, not just to the work of our Church, but also to the wider Datchet community. Sadly this building has reached the end of its working life and is now in a dangerous and dilapidated state; no longer fit for use. It is increasingly failing to meet modern health and safety standards. It also has limited and inadequate provision for the disabled and families with pushchairs etc. The time has come, therefore, where we need to replace the room with a new up-to-date and more user friendly facility that will benefit the whole community. The costs involved in building this new Church Community Centre are in the region of £600,000. We have raised just over a £100,000 since starting to fundraise in earnest. The details of how this is made up are on the "How are we doing? " pages
As you can see from the architect's drawings the new building is designed to blend in with existing buildings in the area and is respectful of the Conservation Area in which it will stand. The building will consist of one hall suitable for use by up to 100 people. The building will however be flexible in its use and it will be possible to divide the hall so that up to three separate groups could use the hall at any one time. Alongside the main hall there will also be two smaller rooms; a kitchen and disabled, gents and ladies conveniences.
The sooner we can start building the better, we are however realistic and realise that £600,000 is a large amount to raise so we aim to start building in January 2011. It is our plan that work would be completed on the new building within 9 months of work commencing.
As has already been stated the overall cost budgeted for this project is £600,000 and this roughly breaks down into the following areas as follows:-
5% ( £ 30,000) Demolition of current prefab structure and Site Survey
60% ( £360,000) Building Cost
4% ( £ 24,000) Furniture and Fittings
2% ( £ 12,000) External Works
29% ( £174,000) Fees, Contingency and VAT
We are striving to keep the build cost down wherever possible, and a current review of the situation is underway. For example we are, under advice, applying for zero-rated VAT on the cost of the build. Also during the past year, there has been no inflationary rise to impact upon the Project, the total included a projected rate of inflation (as per January 2008) over three years. We are fortunate to be in receipt of a small sum from a Trust Fund originally established by Robert Barker (The first Bible Printer of 1600's - until he lost the contract with the unfortunate printing of the infamous "WIcked" Bible) now run by the Barker Bridge House Trust with two branches, The Church Branch remitance,is limited in its use for fabric,repairs and maintenance, and has enabled some of the fees, and other similar build costs to be met to date,
A challenging building site
St. Mary's Church is a Grade II listed building and is located in a Conservation Area. There are protected trees in the Churchyard close to where the new building will stand. This affects the shape and exterior of the build which in turn increases the cost.
The building site is not easily accessible. Sited on the junction bretween London Road, The Green and Horton Road, a busy throughfare which currently holds up traffic when there are the drop offs and pick ups for Weddings and Funerals, with the delivery of materials and equipment, as well as turning of lorries will be a severe challenge. The lane alongside leading to the Vicarage is single track and narrow, There are no parking spaces in the area :The entrance to the Churchyard is through a narrow gate and the path to the building is lined with graves.
Since this is probably one of the oldest inhabited sites in Datchet there could be surprises from an archaeological standpoint when excavating the foundations. We are due to start this aspect inthe near future, hopefully sometime before the end of 2009 where two 3m x 2m trenches will be excavated. We await to see, with some tightly held excitment, what will be revealed during this activity. Some cost to cover for unknowns has had to be built into the budget.
The current Church Room as seen from London Road