Progress on the new Lighting in St Mary's 

Our New Lighting – March 2026 Update 

I’m writing this the day after the Service of Light. There’s a report on the service in the April Parish News. If you attended I hope it felt like a fitting service for the dedication of our lights and if you were unable to attend, you can catch up on YouTube using the following link: https://www.youtube.com/live/_IYISeLnY1I .  Unfortunately, we were unable to stream the demonstration of the new lighting which followed the service because it involved turning off all the lights and the cameras do not work when there is no light and do not reset when the lights are turned back on. However, the lighting display has now been recorded separately and is available on St Mary's YouTube channel https://youtu.be/U_ZxoAkD1is

In February, we asked Tom Flynn Electrical to prioritise the fitting of the lighting inside the church so that it was ready for the Service of Light and so we have a few items to complete outside the church.  I’m hoping that the replacement lights at the west door, the south door and the south chapel door will be installed before the end of March, each of these will be linked to a motion sensor.  The only other item to be finished is to install the bollard lighting for the disabled parking area. Unfortunately, at the time of writing the delivery date for these has not yet been confirmed.

As one might expect for a project of this size and complexity, there a number of “snagging” items to address, and we’ll be tackling these over the next few weeks. However, none of these greatly affect the way that we’ll be using the lights for services and other events. The programming of the controls, which is down to us, is presently only partially done.  When done each setting will ensure that the lights we require for a specific service or other event, e.g. a concert, are switched on right across the church by the press of one button. For example there are different settings for the lights needed for service held in the south aisle and at the south altar compared to, say, a second Sunday 10:30 Communion service. As we use the new lighting, if you spot areas that are not well lit or where the lights are too bright causing glare, please do tell me or the churchwardens so that we can adjust the programme for that service.  We can adjust the brightness of every light which has been installed, many of them individually!  

There is also some making-good to be done, for example where previous light switches and cables have been removed and I hope to get to this during March and April.  When the project is completely finished, I’ll write a final report bringing together the overall cost and how it was all funded.  In the meantime, I hope that the photographs of the new lighting included in this article do it justice!          
             
Steve Hasler
9th March 2026