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LHI Church project pitted against Liverpool cathedral for architecture award
Nocton church pipped to post by Liverpool cathedral in architecture competition
Nocton Village Trail project: what we achieved
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LHI Church project pitted against Liverpool cathedral for architecture award
Location: Lincolnshire
November 2005
An LHI funded group have been nominated to receive the 2005 Award for Religious Architecture for work they undertook with LHI funding.
A mosaic path for the gothic church in the quiet Lincolnshire village of Nocton is up against some of the nation’s most prominent religious buildings for an architecture award.
Nocton’s All Saints Church, Liverpool’s catholic cathedral, a mosque in Leicester, a Victorian church in East London and the Salvation Army’s new headquarters next to St Paul’s Cathedral are all vying for the accolade.
The 2005 Award for Religious Architecture will be given to work of architecture or landscape design from any faith that makes an outstanding contribution to our villages, towns and cities. The work by the Nocton Village Trail Association have been recognised as one.
Nocton villagers will find out if the 75-metre mosaic path they built at All Saints Church will take first prize in the competition at a ceremony at London’s Design Council on Wednesday 9th November.
The award is given by RIBA (the Royal Institute of British Architecture) and ACE (The Art and Christianity Enquiry), an educational charity that promotes dialogue between faiths and visual arts.
Laura Moffatt from Art and Christianity Enquiry said: “The award was set up to put across how the external aspects of faith buildings are just as important as what happens on the inside.”
More than 60 Nocton villagers volunteered as part of the LHI funded project over a period of a year to design and build the church’s access.
David Glew, the church’s consultant architect, nominated the project for the RIBA/ACE award.
He said: “There has been tremendous community involvement in constructing this church path, which frankly is the nicest I’ve ever seen and being a church architect, I have seen a fair few.”
The 75-metre path is laid in a special form of red tarmacadam, edged with two pebble mosaic friezes and inlaid with 25 pebble mosaic central panels in four different designs.
The patterns in the friezes and panels reflect the stencil work that decorates the inside walls of the Victorian church, which was built in 1860 in the gothic revival style.
A York stone paved ramp was also built from the path to the main church doors, replacing the steps to allow for disabled access.
The grant also went towards funding a village trail which includes more than eight works of art, including wood carvings, a lenticular, a sun dial, agricultural sculptures and tributes to the village’s Roman past.
Artist Cliff Baxendale, who kickstarted the village arts movement when he moved to Nocton in 1999, said he has been overwhelmed by the amount of time villagers have happily put in and at the number of people who have wanted to be involved.
"About 100 people came to the unveiling of the first piece we did for the Millennium, decorative village signs at both ends of Nocton, and so with the arts group I had set up I started looking at what else we could do.
"Looking at the other projects shortlisted for the RIBA award, we are blessed to get into the final five. If we win it will be wonderful recognition of the amount of work that people actually put into creating the path.
"The projects have all helped to create a sense of the villagers' worth adding to the ethos and heritage that exists."
He added that if they win the prize money of £3,000, they will look at using it to commission ironwork that echoes the motifs on the path for the balustrades at the entrance to the church.
Judging the award are The Guardian’s architecture correspondent Jonathan Glancey, past president of RIBA, writer and broadcaster Professor Maxwell Hutchinson, London Diocese Historic Churches Project Officer the Revd. Maggie Duran, the Dean of Chelmsford Cathedral The Very Revd. Peter Judd and UCE lecturer in architecture and urban design Dr Noha Hasser.
They will be looking at the quality of design, its integrity in relation to the faith and traditions of the client, respect for neighbouring environment, imagination and practicality.
St John the Baptist church in Leytonstone, East London, was shortlisted for its new disabled access, Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King has been nominated for the redesign of its entrance which includes a piazza and café, Leicester’s Masjid Umar mosque is a new build and the new Salvation Army building is a modern glass-fronted structure flooded with colour and light.
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