The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings

Faith in Maintenance has been a 5-year project helping volunteers who care for historic places of worship by providing free training days to enable them to understand how their building works and how to solve problems caused by leaky gutters and blocked drains.

Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and English Heritage and run by the SPAB, Faith in Maintenance has run 150 courses since 2007 throughout England and Wales for Anglican, Methodist, URC, Roman Catholic and Jewish groups. 

We have trained more than 5,000 volunteers at venues as diverse as Wesley’s Chapel, London; the Friends’ Meeting House, Lancaster; New West End Synagogue; and Leominster Priory.  Participants in the Faith in Maintenance project represent the incredible variety of faith buildings ranging from Norman gems through to elaborate Victorian chapels and even churches of the mid-20th century.

Everyone who attended a Faith in Maintenance day received a copy of our ‘Good Maintenance Guide’ and a maintenance calendar and we now have 590 subscribers who regularly receive our email bulletin.

Now that the Faith in Maintenance project is coming to an end a new maintenance project is planned.  You can read more about the Maintenance Co-operative Movement on our website.