Avid readers of the Church Times (there are still a few, in addition to job-hunting clergy) will have been aware for some time of the looming threat to the Church of England’s stock of church buildings. This is nothing new, of course. In the nineteenth century, our practical Victorian ancestors thinned out the number of churches in the City of London in response to population movements, and most counties have their tally of abandoned or ruined churches, left high and dry when village cornmunities have evaporated or been moved elsewhere by the landed gentry wishing to improve the view from their grand houses. Along the east coast, mediaeval churches have fallen into the sea, and a good many cheaply-built Georgian and Victorian churches were taken down before they fell down.
