St George's, Borough High Street

Surely there must be some plans in the works to do something about the exterior? I had a proper look yesterday and was amazed; it looks like a condemned building, not somewhere that has recently had millions spent on it - albeit on structural underpinnings.

boroughpaul wrote:

it looks awful! all those months covered in scaffolding i expected a spruced up gem of a church but its as dirty and neglected-looking as ever...what was the money spent on????? whose money was it???

I think the money was raised through a mixture of private donations, fund raising events [including the sale of Ivanhoes books] and the disposal [to private developers] of the church property in Lant Street.

No doubt the process of underpinning the building was expensive, but I too would like to have seen the exterior cleaned and repaired. Although the building is not the original structure having been extensively rebuilt in its lifetime, that end of BHS is hardly blessed with notable architecture, [apart from the tube station] and the loss of the trees is a shame - did someone get chainsaw happy?

Is the white, powdery-looking stuff on it where they've blasted it? I can't understand why there's green stuff (moss? algae?)still on the white bits at the top. I do think it seems a bit cleaner in general though.
What's your connection with the church Ivanhoe? Could you find out what's happened?

I have no connection with the church. I have a (customer) connection with the Oak though, where they have been selling 2nd hand books in aid of the church for ages. We get through a lot of books in the Ivanhouse, so I've taken to leaving them at the pub once finished so they can sell them on.

Oh I see. Also, good to know a source of second-hand books.

Good to see that the church is finally back in use. The last month's rain seems to have got rid of much of the builders dust.

The lottery appears to have put in quite a large chunk:

Heritage Lottery Fund website grant search wrote:

Project: St George the Martyr, Borough High Street, LB Southwark
Applicant: PCC of St George's, vicar and churchwardens
Programme: Joint Places of Worship
Location: London, London
Region: London
Amount awarded: £1,750,000

Description: Major engineering work to save church from demolition.

But I'm still not sure whether the much quoted £3.6million is the total cost including fitting out the crypt to bring it back into use.

It looks as though some external cleaning/rebuilding is going on, albeit in a rather desultory way. Does anyone know more about what's in store for St George the Martyr?