SOS Grove Gardens Chapel – Appeal
The Victorian Grove Gardens Chapel in Richmond Old Burial Ground is suffering from severe subsidence attributed to climate change. Without immediate intervention this delightful building will fall into disrepair. Help Habitats & Heritage to install emergency propping to prevent further deterioration.
- Raised £0.00
- Target £10,000.00

The Grove Garden Chapel has sat in Richmond Old Burial Ground since 1875 – functioning originally as the Church of England burial chapel for the cemetery. It was designed by the celebrated architect Sir Arthur Blomfield whose work scatters the globe, with structures in the Falkland Islands and buildings closer to home at Cambridge University and the law courts branch of the Bank of England in Fleet Street.
The chapel remained active for a century before being decommissioned in the 1960s. By the 1990s the building was declared redundant and had fallen into severe disrepair. In the late 1990s, The Environment Trust for Richmond, predecessor to H&H, restored the chapel to its former glory and adapted it for community use.
In 2016, cracks began to form in the nave where the the transepts meet. The deterioration reached such a severe level by 2020 that the children’s nursery which was occupying the building had to vacate. Thorough monitoring has been undertaken subsequently with weekly inspections carried out and bi-monthly measurements of the cracks undertaken by structural engineers.
Habitats & Heritage is working with Historic England to remove this building from the Heritage at Risk register and once again make it available to the community. To realise this, the building will require underpinning and full restoration. A project of this scale will cost in excess of £1 million and will require several years in the planning and to raise the necessary funds.
Habitats & Heritage needs to raise funds in the interim to prop the structure to halt the movement before embarking on the larger fundraising project. Can you help us to raise £10,000 to help fund these emergency propping works?

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