Progress on the new Lighting in St Mary's 

A Partial Switch-On - November 2025

In early December, we will be using the new lighting for north and south aisles and for the congregation in the nave. It is also possible that the new lighting in the choir vestry and north chapels will be in use. Maybe, but less likely, the new uplighters for the clerestory windows and the roof bosses in the nave will also have been switched on. Just how much of this we are using throughout Advent and over Christmas depends on the progress made in November.

During October, the majority of the new lights in the choir vestry and all of the new light fittings in the north and south aisles and north chapel were installed. You may well have noticed the loose cabling which comes down the wall at the west end of the church, on both sides, which connects the lights in the aisles to their power supply. These will be tidied up and the cabling will be painted to match the wall in due course.

November will be an exciting and intensive month.  The plan, as I write on 2nd November, is to install the remaining lights in the choir vestry, all of the uplighters in the nave and then the controls for the lights. Throughout December, we will be able to control some of the new lights from a temporary set of buttons on a welcome unit at the back of the nave. Specialist lighting control engineers will be at the church on four days in November to finalise the set up.  The buttons used to control the lighting will be programmed into “scenes”, e.g. pressing the button labelled “10:30am service” will bring on all the lights needed for that service. A small group from our lighting team will define the group of lights for each scene, we will be able to adjust these later too.

I also expect that the emergency lights, which will be some of the new lights in various areas of the church, will be livened up during November.  This requires the batteries which will power the emergency lights to be installed on top of the servery and childrens’ corner cupboards. Our existing emergency lights will continue to be used until the new ones are available. 

As noted in the November Parish News, the lighting contractors will finish for this year on Thursday 27th November and none of our Advent and Christmas services will be impacted by the lighting work.  They will take all of their equipment with them and all of the pews in the north aisle will be brought back into use. They will return on Friday 2nd January to remove the choir stall lights to allow access to the clerestory level in the chancel and sanctuary without damaging them. From Monday 5th January scaffolding will be installed in the chancel on the south side so that we can redecorate around the chancel windows at the same time, repairing the damage caused by the chancel roof leaks in 2021. The organ will also be protected during this work.  We expect the scaffolding to be dismantled and the choir stall lights to be back in place before the end of January.  

The full lighting is targeted to be completed by the end of February or very early March.  Until then the regular weekday services and activities will continue to be in the Parish Rooms with annual services, e.g. the Holocaust Service and the Service for the World Day of Prayer and the associated rehearsal, and funerals taking place in the church. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask or consult the display at the back of the church which continues to be updated each month.
         
Steve Hasler
2nd November 2025