By Community Correspondent Peter Lidbetter.

Like seemingly all churches, Kingston Parish Church (KPC) has, for many years now, had an appeal for funds with which to maintain or repair it. Recently however, the need for funds has increased with KPC’s drive for a new and innovative project, involving movement of much of the layout of the church and the construction of a whole new building. The purpose of this is – to some extent – to help reinstate this church in its traditional role of not just a place of worship but also a community centre.

Unfortunately, the design of the new building requires it to be built in the North-west corner of the churchyard, which is lined with possibly ancient graves.

Recently, the graves were dug into to test the stability and suitability of the ground, and to ensure that the new building would not be built over anything of historic or archaeological interest. If any such findings had been made it would have set back the work on the building indefinitely, whilst the remains were moved to another location.

For the project to go as planned the Church had to apply for permission, which included conducting a 28 day period of public consultation. The result of this was that an archaeologist was required on the dig-site itself to verify whether any remains that were found were of historical interest.

At the excavation, two types of hole were dug. Three exploratory bores were dug several metres deep in order to sample the conditions of the earth all the way down to the proposed depth of the foundations. Fortunately, all three came up with a positive result and the ground proved suitable for the construction to go ahead as planned. The second hole was dug to get an idea of any archaeological evidence under the proposed site. It was dug by hand to minimise damage to any such remains. Along with several comparatively recent graves, the search uncovered an older burial vault which, although very old, was not shallow enough to hinder the construction and ruled not important enough to be worth disturbing. If it did hide anything of importance, it shall remain hidden.

All things taken into account, the results of the findings are as satisfactory as could reasonably be expected, and there seem to be no reasons for the church not to continue with the renovations as planned.