Historic places of worship in England offer an opportunity to explore key questions in the conservation and management of heritage assets by community groups. In particular, Anglican places of worship in rural contexts in England are often the oldest building in a village and have been sites of community cohesion (and occasionally conflict) for centuries. Officially managed by Parochial Church Councils (PCCs), the planning and funding of project work for repairs or re-ordering in these buildings often falls to one or two people within the parish, yet this work is undertaken with the intention of benefiting of a wider public. These projects may have the aim of widening access to the building or providing an amenity that was previously lacking from the village. What is more, in managing grant-aided repair, PCC members act as an extension of heritage agencies assisting them with their aims of conserving historic fabric and protecting these buildings in the longer term.

In planning new works in historic churches, PCC members engage with a range of heritage agencies. Apart from organising permission for the proposals, which they or their architect must negotiate with a number of official agencies, costly building work will require fundraising at various levels. A mixed economy is in place to service this with funding sources ranging from individual giving to major donors and the contribution both from government and philanthropic organisations. Non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) such as Historic England and the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) may seek outcomes not limited to the maintenance of historic fabric. These may have the aim of building capacity amongst their grant recipients or of extending public engagement with the building, often with a view to sharing its history. These initiatives extend through interpersonal networks beyond the parochial into regional and national spheres.

How we characterise the relationship between these communities and other agencies may stem from our theoretical perspective. 

Nikolas Rose (1999; 2008) has seen such initiatives as representing ‘government through community’ where governments use ‘community’ as a technical term, as ‘a cure to the ills that the social had not been able to address’ (1999:175). The rhetoric of ‘community building’ is certainly a feature in the talk of politicians promoting a ‘the third sector’ or the ‘big society’ and those institutions formed in the image of these concepts. But life persists beyond this rhetoric, and PCC members may be willing to take on the work involved with aims quite apart from those of the NDPBs they engage with. This paper explores these issues in relation to in-depth interviews with PCC members.