Crafty Church goings on

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In a spin: Margaret Payne at her spinning wheel, shows Katie Hampson, 10, how it's done.

There’s marquetry in the minstrels’ gallery, needlework in the nave, painting in an upper chapel and woodwork below, all going on inside St Katherine’s Church, Canvey. Artists and craftsmen not only work inside, they have been repairing their old church home for the past seven years.

But now the last £2,000 of the £15,000 the church has raised, is going on roof repairs to the old vestry in use as a kitchen. It means more fund-raising is necessary to fill the coffers again. Castle Point Tory MP Sir Bernard Braine will open the church for the 1986 season on Saturday, May 3, and then there will be a series of open days about once a month through the summer.

Mr Roger Dollery, of Philmead Road, Benfleet, vice-chairman of the Heritage Arts and Crafts Society said: “We hope the public will come along, see what we are doing and buy our work. It’s a 100-year-old church and it had been badly vandalised when it was taken over in 1978. Local residents, schoolchildren and the Heritage Arts and Crafts Society cleaned it up and started the original refurbishing.”