Cathedral Camp 07
The Website of St Denys Church, Southampton
Quick Links
• Newsletter• Sunday Services
• Coming Events
• Room hire
• Contact Us
• Site Map
St Denys Church
Dundee Road
Southampton
SO17 2ND
02380 671757
St Denys Church Cathedral Camp 2007
The Cathedral Camps group organise week long volunteer camps in historic churches and cathedrals across Britain.They offer young people in the 16 to 25 year age group a chance to participate in the restoration and conservation of Britains historic churches and cathdrals.
St Denys Church hosted a highly successful Cathedral Camp in 2007 involving 14 young people from Britain and Europe. The young people undertook a wide range of cleaning tasks.
The work concentrated on the chancel, this involved the removal of the carpet revealing decorative Victorian floor tiles in the choir. High level dirt and cobwebs were brushed down using long handled brushes.
Areas of the chancel floor that had been covered in polyurethane varnish involved many hours of peeling the varnish off in thick strips followed by steam cleaning to soften and remove the remaining fragments. The floors were then scrubbed clean removing the remaining dirt from their surfaces.
The window cills in the chancel were scrubbed clean and the radiators were repainted in gold paint as were the iron supports for the alter rail. The wooden handrail was scrubbed clean of old darkened polish and then re-coloured and waxed.
Throughout the building brass-ware including the eagle lectern were polished involving many hours of hard work.
Parts of the church centre corridor were repainted and external work included removing ivy from around the trees in the church yard and at the base of the church walls.
The volunteers were housed in the church centre with its excellent kitchen and other facilities. Badminton and table tennis seemed to be popular activities when the volunteers were not visiting live music venues or trips to Winchester, Southampton City centre or the various local swimming pools during their week end free time.
The recently rebuilt local community centre provided much needed shower facilities a short walk from the church.
All the hard work of the volunteers has been really worthwhile providing a much cleaner building and included some minor repairs.
There is much further work to be undertaken and it is anticipated and hoped that the Lady chapel would be the next part of the building to be cleaned in a similar way by Cathedral Camp volunteers in 2008.
The Cathedral Camp group
Restoring the chancel floor
Cutting back the ivy
St Denys Church will be hosting its second cathedral camp week commencing 23/07/08