1 July 2017
The building is almost complete! Some of the Junior Church paid a visit and were amazed at the transformation! Most of the building is unrecognisable. The project has also doubled the floor area of the church. However as you can see in the third picture we now have the huge job of clearing the main church which is crammed full of boxes of costumes, furniture, teaching materials, books, props, scenery and technical equipment which, despite all the precautions, was all covered in an inch of brick dust! Everything needs to be cleaned, sorted and found a home in the new building and then the church repainted and deep cleaned. We also have to re-run many of the cables for our sound and lighting as they passed through the part of the building that was demolished and hence have been cut.
10 July 2017
The building was passed by Building Control as complete and handed over to us by the contractors. We now have the job of fitting out the all the toilets with items like soap and towel dispensers, constructing shelves in all the cupboards and storerooms, installing appliances and putting up pictures and noticeboards - plus clearing out the church as mentioned above! We are having a large shed built at the back of the church to house all our props and scenery - to avoid cluttering up the public areas of the building - which was a feature before the rebuild!
16 July 2017
This morning we held our first service back in Bladon Methodist Church for a year! The service was led by local preacher David Harper who you can see in the back row of the attached picture. Work will now continue over the summer on putting the final touches to the building ready for an open weekend and re-opening ceremony in the autumn - details of this event will be posted on this site towards the end of the summer.
29 July 2017
The church has been used for a production again for the first time in almost 2 years! The musical Guys and Dolls was rehearsed and staged in a week at the end of July. It is good to know all the technical facilities in the church are working again! There was a lot of work involved repairing or replacing damaged or missing cabling. Work is now continuing at church putting up shelves, pictures and building the shed at the back of the building.
