Restore Project | St John's the Baptist Old Malden Church of England

Preserving Our Heritage. Renewing Our Welcome. Restoring Our Church for Future Generations.

St John’s has stood at the heart of Old Malden for centuries — a place of worship, community and history. But time and the elements have taken their toll: our historic church tower and roofs are in urgent need of repair, and internal damp issues must be addressed to protect this sacred space from further damage.

The Restore Project brings together essential restoration work with a wider vision for the church’s future — safeguarding the fabric of the building and strengthening how we serve our growing community. By repairing stonework, renewing roofs and making the building watertight, we secure St John’s not just as a landmark, but as a thriving place for worship, welcome, outreach and shared life.

This effort depends on community involvement, prayer, partnership and generous support.

Every contribution, whether through giving, volunteering or simply spreading the word, helps ensure that St John’s continues to be a safe, beautiful and life-giving place for all who come here now and for generations to come.

Repairs apart, we want to expand our community support by

Opening our building to wider community use as a hub for use by heritage, nature, and environmental organisations.

Building on our current social care activities, such as supporting carers' of family members and friends with dementia, and offering ways of helping people prepare for the death of loved ones (Dying Matters/ GraveTalk).

A greater involvement with our local schools by hosting school groups exploring our rich historical and natural heritage.

These are dependent on having structurally safe and sound buildings.

To make the overall project financially feasible it is being undertaken in stages (Phases).

Phase 1, the buttress repair may be over but there is still a need to complete repairs to:

The tower brickwork
The broken tower roofing & parapet
The leaking nave roof & dormer window
The leaking vestry roof
Internal damp.

The overall cost of repairs remains about £450,000, although this sum has been reduced by our ability to fund the buttress repairs from grants from Marshall's Charity and the Surrey Churches Preservation Trust.

PHASE 2 goles:

Complete the repairs to the tower and tower parapet
Repair the pitched nave roofs
Start at least one new activity benefiting our local community a dementia carers support group is most timely as is the hub.

Estimated cost for the tower repair is £227,000 (ex VAT), the roofs

£60,500 (ex VAT), totalling £287,500 plus VAT £57,500. Costs for the social care and hub activities will be on top. Final tenders will up-date these estimates.

To fund Phase 2, our grants committee is putting together applications to a number of external funding organisations.

It is a time-consuming complex process, requiring explaining who we are, what we do, what we want to do, the need for urgent building repairs, how our social activities will benefit the community, our partnerships (what our hub users will do), and providing detailed costs and other financial details.

All grant giving organisations have strict rules stipulating;

• what they fund

• how much they will give

• how much the applicant (us) must raise themselves prior to making an application.

While we have so far been successful in raising our own funds, we have also had to employ architectural and advisory professionals and fund Phase 1.

It is critical we continue fundraising to meet the grant giving organisations rules. However, the success of the Restore Project is not only dependent on monies from grant giving organisations, but on us too.

We acknowledge and thank everyone who has donated to the Restore Project. Well done!