Mission Church (St Anne’s) likely to be demolished

Hastings is at risk of losing one of its historic buildings because people are unaware that its demolition is planned. St Anne’s in Chambers Road, Hollington, is a small church designed by a distinguished architect. Its fate is to be determined by Hastings Borough Council’s planning committee probably on 28 September 2022. As notification letters of the planning application are no longer sent by the council, local people are likely to be unaware of it. Richard Price reports.

John Leopold Denman designed, restored or repaired many Sussex churches in the pre and post-war periods, often under the Denman & Son name, with his son and other members of the practice. The firm was Brighton-based. Photographs of the beautiful buildings that he created or renovated exist on websites such as Wikipedia along with a detailed list of his achievements.

Victory 1066, a Bexhill-based limited company, want to demolish the church and replace it with five houses: planning application (HS/FA/22/00028).

The public comments on the application to date are slightly more for objection than support. People supporting the application have cited the housing shortage. All except two are very short (two or three sentences long).

Supporting comments

Miss Anya Hughes’s objection is one of the exceptions. She writes, “I am in full support of this planning application. As a teacher at Churchwood primary academy, talking to parents and students there is a huge need for more local housing. In addition there are also several other community spaces which are under-used within the area, like the Parish rooms or Hollington Community Centre.” Miss Hughes appears to be a sporting associate of one of the developers .

Mr Unwin is the second exception. He probably did not realise that if you do not explicitly write that you are objecting, the comment gets listed as one of support. He wrote that he understood the need to demolish but felt that “five homes is too much for the site.”

Objection comments

The objection comments are long and detailed.

The Twentieth Century Society is a British charity which campaigns for the preservation of architectural heritage from 1914 onwards. The society objected to the application to demolish St Anne’s Church. The objection letter written by Coco Whittaker, Caseworker, asked for the church to be defined as a Non-Designated Heritage Asset (NDHA). Government guidance states that “Non-Designated heritage assets are buildings, monuments, sites, places, areas or landscapes identified by plan-making bodies as having a degree of heritage significance meriting consideration in planning decisions but which do not meet the criteria for designated heritage assets.”

The objection letters include detailed descriptions of the architectural merits of the building and its history. For example, Mrs Heather Grief has an objection comment in which she described the church’s interior: “St Anne’s is a very nice small church in flint and brick, by a distinguished architect (John Leopold Denman) that deserves to be preserved. It is very well planned to give the feel of a loftier building inside, with tall windows going into the roof slope in dormers, and the interior is well-preserved too.”

She clearly knows her history and architecture, “Denman & Son also did work on Bosham Church, and the tower is reminiscent of Bosham’s tower. The shape of the tower is most distinctive, being square on two sides and curved on the other two sides, with a matching roof. I am not aware of another one like it.”

Her final paragraph states that, “being small, it could be used for other purposes, of a community nature — social services has been using it recently. Or it could be sympathetically converted into housing.”

Some of the supporting statements are from people who are pleased that the church is being replaced by affordable housing. Bernard McGinley’s objection letter points out that “This application is for market housing, not affordable housing, and the applicant can’t even state the number of bedrooms properly – something the Validation Unit could have corrected.”

The Council for British Archaeology (CBA) appear to have written an objection that has been categorised as a supporting comment. This is possibly because Dr Alison Edwards, Assistant Listed Buildings Caseworker, writes, “The CBA do not object to the change of use of this site to provide dwellings, as St Anne’s church is no longer in a viable use. However, we would prefer to see a scheme which retained and converted the existing characterful church building and converted it to a residential use.”

The CBA’s recommendation is, “The CBA are not opposed to the principle of the change of use of this former church site. However, we would prefer that, if possible, the historic character of the building is retained through its adaptive reuse. This would both conserve the building’s status as a piece of local history, its architectural interest, and would significantly reduce the carbon emissions of the proposals.” Because “The redundancy of the church alone does not necessarily justify its total loss, when its conversion could retain much of its external character and appearance and the legibility of its original use.” And, “the CBA are opposed to the demolition of structurally sound historic buildings, due to the carbon footprint of demolition and reconstruction.”

Mr Lee Turner’s objection gives some indication of the building’s recent history; “Although St Annes Church has not been used for worship for some time, maybe 10years or so it has been in use as offices by a debt counselling charity serving the community in that time up until sometime in 2020 and is now used as a Gym. This is not mentioned in the Planning Statement, the term “Redundant” may be misleading.”

Miss Donna Donna mentions that her nine-year-old daughter’s friend likes her kickboxing classes in the building.

Carole Sanderson complains that the trees were chopped down prior to the application being made and she misses them because they were a beautiful sight.

Traffic and parking are also mentioned as local issues.

Beautiful and irreplaceable

As a campaigning journalist I confess to having submitted a planning objection because my opinion is that the building is beautiful and really rare being constructed in a way that makes it irreplaceable. The building could be repurposed for the community, perhaps as a martial arts gym for which it would be ideally suited.

Planning application HS/FA/22/00028  and comments can be viewed on the council’s website Hastings Online.  The officers’ report, with recommendation, will probably be published on 21 September.

Also in: Architecture and Design

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