St Mary’s Building Project
St Mary’s church is a vibrant community in West Horsley in Surrey with a historic Grade 1 listed church, the origins of which date back to 1030 AD.
The congregation sees itself as one church family that spans the generations from toddlers through to those in their 90’s. Like many churches we offer different styles of services of worship. Some prefer a more family orientated contemporary style, others a more traditional style.
Though beautiful, the church building is unsuitable for family services. With the one space, we cannot run separate children’s activity groups during services. Consequently, for many years the family services have been held elsewhere.
This is costly and inefficient, and it hinders the ‘One Family’ ethos and identity in which we believe so strongly. Additionally, with many new houses being built locally, we want to be able to welcome increasing numbers wishing to worship with us.
We also have a concern for the long term viability of our historic church building: a further benefit of this project is that it will restore footfall to, and use of, the church site, and in doing so will protect it from any risk of falling out of use and into disrepair.
Our Plan
Our building project aims to deliver a new Church Centre, followed by major improvements to our parish Church, a reordering, ‘that enables everyone from 0-100 to worship on the one site’ as well as being able to provide modern facilities for both Church and community activity.
We intend to create a new church centre with sufficient rooms to enable us to offer facilities for a whole range of activities both for the church family but also to the wider community.
Our hope is for a new Church Centre that will provide:
- A new home for our weekly Friday morning café which is attended by many in the community.
- A larger space for our popular baby and toddler group, Noah’s Ark.
- The potential for the running of courses, advice sessions and other ministries such as the debt advice service, CAP (Christians Against Poverty).
- Modern facilities that can be used by the church and community for small events such as funeral wakes.
We will also re-locate the church office from its site on East Lane to the new Church Centre.
Between January 2023 and July 2024 we consulted with our congregation and our local community to identify and capture suggestions & hopes for the new building as well as any concerns or reservations.
You can review our Building Project Q&A here for responses where they have been formulated
In July 2024 our request for planning permission was submitted to Guildford Borough Council.
Whilst we believe this is an exciting project, it will take several years to complete and depend of course on our ability to raise sufficient funding. If you are interested in supporting the project financially there are a number of ways in which you can do so:
If you would like to make a single donation to the project, please use the following bank details:
West Horsley PCC Building Fund
Sort Code: 30 93 74
Account Number: 84760468
- If you would like to send a cheque, please make it payable to West Horsley PCC and deliver it to the Church Office at the Wheelhouse or send it to The Treasurer, St Mary’s Church Office, The Wheelhouse, 82 East Lane, West Horsley KT24 6LQ
- You may also consider leaving a legacy to St Mary’s and making a gift for the building project via your will. For more information please download a copy of our Legacy Leaflet
If you shop online, or know someone that does, you can easily contribute to the St Mary’s Building Project at no extra cost to yourself. We have set up a link with Easyfundraising – an online organisation that partners with over 7,000 brands who will donate part of what you spend to a cause of your choice.
If you would like more detail about the funding aspect of the project please message buildproject@stmaryswesthorsley.co.uk and the fundraising team will respond.
