The Robertson Street entrance to His Place church, one of the areas where comprehensive repairs are needed.

His Place wins £250,000 grant for vital repairs and music heritage project

Vital repairs will soon get under way at His Place Community Church in central Hastings following the award of a grant of nearly £250,000 from Lottery funds. The money will also enable a music heritage project to go ahead, as the church explains.

His Place Community Church in Hastings is delighted to announce that it has been awarded a grant of £249,946 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for urgent building repairs and an exciting community-based music heritage project called Make a Joyful Noise.

His Place has operated from the former Robertson Street Congregational Church since 2013. This project, which is only made possible by money raised by National Lottery players, will carry out a first phase of emergency repairs to this landmark building in central Hastings. It will also research and celebrate a century’s worth of church-related music-making in the town.

Wind and salt erosion have taken a toll of the building’s exterior, including the south elevation windows.

Work will commence this November and major stone and glass repairs to the east and south-facing sides of the church will be unveiled in June 2023, along with an online Hastings music heritage hub.

Listed building

The Grade II-listed former Robertson Street Congregational Church was built in 1885 to designs by the prolific Hastings architect Henry Ward. The building is a significant presence in the Trinity Triangle area of Hastings, with two striking Classical facades visible to the public: a tall, narrow one facing Robertson Street to the east and a large, six-bay elevation facing Cambridge Road to the north. The Robertson Street elevation is one of the sides due for comprehensive repair.

The interior of the building retains many of its original features and the large horse-shoe galleried worship space, which seats 700 people, is a strikingly beautiful venue with a superb acoustic for unamplified music. Since 2017 it has also served as the home of Opus Theatre, an innovative musical arts venture led by British-Argentine composer and pianist Polo Piatti.

Opus’s residency and the use of the church by community music groups such as One Hastings Many Voices reflects its long history of music education and performance. For a century or more from the 1880s, the Robertson Street Congregational Church was at the forefront of community efforts to provide free and affordable music in Hastings.

Inspiring musical history

Like so many other churches, it ran choirs for all ages, nurtured vocal and instrumental soloists, and hosted music festivals, competitions and concerts – all of which fed into the secular music culture in the town. Make a Joyful Noise seeks to recapture, preserve, and celebrate this inspiring history.

“We’re so happy to have been awarded this grant,” said Nicky Roper, church administrator. “It’s going to help us save our beautiful building and also the community and cultural work that we and Opus Theatre do in it. We want to thank National Lottery players for their support as well as everyone in Hastings who has helped us achieve this amazing result.

“We’re also very grateful to Historic England and the Trinity Triangle High Street Heritage Action Zone for a project development grant of £20,000 that helped us to make our winning bid to the Heritage Fund.

Old hymn books, a reminder of a vibrant musical history.

“We really want people to get involved with the project. We are advertising several paid posts for project support, including a music heritage researcher and a music performance curator. Please get in touch with us or check our website if you would like to know more about these roles. The job descriptions are available here and applications close on 14 October.”

Katherine Prior, project advisor, said: “We are super excited about the music heritage project. Our hope is that Make a Joyful Noise can bring together in one online archive a ton of material about music-making in Hastings from the 1880s onwards. It’s a fabulous history that needs preserving and celebrating.

“Please contact us if you’d like to be involved in researching it and making it accessible to everyone.”

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