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This is a text-only version of an article first published on Tuesday, 21 May 2019. Information shown on this page may no longer be current.
Children take part in a sponsored Wilderness Walk ONE of the diocese's most ambitious church hall renovation projects has won a string of awards less than a year after its opening party. Warwick Hall in Burford was awarded a Royal Institute of British Architects South Regional Award and a Regional Conservation Award last month and has been shortlisted for a RIBA national award.
It had already come highly commended in the Royal Institute of Charted Surveyors awards community benefit group.
It has also been shortlisted for the national Civic Voice Award. The £3. 7m project was the culmination of five years of planning, fundraising and building.
It saw a super-modern extension, designed by Acanthus Clews Architects, toan existing historic but tiny hall. "The architects painstakingly ensured the work was in keeping with both the existing hall and the Grade One listed St John the Baptist Church. The Revd Richard Coombs, the vicar, said: "The conservation award acknowledges the conservation of the old building and the historical significance of the site.
We are really thrilled that the way that a modern 21st-century building has been sensitively designed to sit alongside the older church hall has been recognised by RIBA. "The vision was for the hall to be 'the heart of the church's ministry and the heart of the community's life'.
The sense of community was really quite significant and this was one of the things the judges commented on."