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Chesham United Reformed Church
Wyatt MacLaren LLP have worked with Chesham URC since early 2009 to develop a scheme to reorganise their church and hall buildings to better serve the church and local community. The church is a valuable historic building within the Conservation Area in the centre of the town.
A key requirement was to improve the difficult access both into the building and within the building. There are steep steps up to both church and hall entrances and the only access for wheelchair users is at the rear of the building via a ramp which does not comply with current standards for disabled access. There is also a level difference between the church and hall internally. The church also wished to improve their kitchen facilities to provide for social use of the building and to open up the front of the church to encourage new and regular users to drop in informally.
The scheme developed with the congregation includes 2 areas of extension. An extension to the rear of the hall provides a new larger kitchen and an extension to the side of the hall provides a corridor linking the church to wcs, vestry, meeting room and kitchen so that the hall and church can be in independent use. The floor of the corridor is ramped to deal with the level difference between the two main areas without the need for a ramp within the church. Disabled access to the building is provided by re-leveling the path to the side of the church and hall and repositioning external doors so that both hall and church can be simply accessed via a gently sloping path.
At the front of the church a new servery and accessible wc are proposed for informal social use next to the main entrance. A new glazed lobby would allow the main entrance doors to be left open even in cold weather – both of these changes would allow the church to have a more welcoming aspect to the main street.
The scheme is currently being considered for Planning Consent following positive pre-application advice from planning officers.
