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May 11th, 2007

Desks in church vestries

faculty

I observed the above facility faculty notice during a wander around some churches in the City of London this week. (A facility faculty notice, for those who don’t know, is an application to The Powers That Be to make changes to a historic church. Well, more or less.) The notice reads:

The grant of (three?) licences for the use of a desk (and other facilities) in the Vestry of St Clement’s Church, Eastcheap 1 St Clement’s Court London EC4N 7HB for a term of 12 months from 1st January 2007

This intrigued me for these reasons:

  1. Do you need a licence to use a desk in a vestry? Perhaps readers can educate me. Do any of you have unlicenced desks in your vestries?
  2. Why do you need three licences for one desk? (I’m fairly sure that’s what is written, but not 100% certain owing to the fact the notice was written without the use of a desk.)
  3. What are the ‘other facilities’? I think this could be the key to this notice. The desk is there to make us think that the vestry is to be used for writing in service books and suchlike, but it is my suspicion that there are some unusual ‘other facilities’ being installed under the smokescreen of a desk, so to speak. Any suggestions?

More info about the church in question is here. It doesn’t mention the desk, which just goes to prove my point(s).

[Edited to change my facilities to faculties.]

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12 Responses to “Desks in church vestries”


  1. Aaron says:

    Desk and fully stocked bar would be my first guess, though a fusion generator could also be in the works…

    May 12th, 2007 at 1:57 am
  2. Pastor Astor says:

    A pillow, a blanket and a “do not disturb”-sign.

    May 12th, 2007 at 8:27 am
  3. maggi says:

    it will be change of usage, I imagine. Will someone be using the desk for business purposes? (Or even for drawing cartoons? I’m sure you need at least three licences for that!)

    May 12th, 2007 at 9:19 am
  4. Davo says:

    Just a quick note to say that your pictures seem to have stopped appearing in the RSS feed when viewed in Google Reader – they are there in the HTML, but not appearing in the browser

    May 12th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
  5. Carolyn says:

    “Other facilities” is probably code for permission to use the toilet and, possibly, the microwave.

    May 12th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
  6. SarahW says:

    Just slightly intrigued by the fact that St Clements appears to be linked with the church I go to in Ongar. I did not know this… and I have certainly not heard anything about a faculty for a desk(s). Will have to ask about this tomorrow morning…

    May 12th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
  7. Chris Clark says:

    being a sad individual I know about this stuff…it is a faculty not facility…it is very odd that it is being granted for something so temporary as this would normally be covered by an Archdeacon’s Certificate or Faculty…most Churches would do it first and then ask afterwards but strictly things like this illegal and you could end up being

    1) Ordered to make Coffeeat alls ervices for three years
    2) Told to learn the Athenasian Creed
    3) Sent to the local Free Evangelical Church

    Alternatively you have to put things back as they were.

    When we got permission to remove our old organ the organ man was terrified that we didn’t have the right permission as if we did it without it we would have to put it all back as it was…not easy as most of it was scrapped!

    May 12th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
  8. Richard says:

    You’ll probably find that you’ll need an aditional faculty for the microwave, and probably a separate one for the toilet too. We’re currently going through the process of getting multiple faculties for our upcoming restoration work and have been told that we will probably get the faculty for the underfloor heating, but there are issues with giving us a faculty to do anything with the pews – a bit of a problem as we can’t physically do the underfloor heating if we haven’t got permission to move the pews…

    Actually, I guess they’re lucky in having the space for a desk in the vestry – ours is very limited on space – although the area dean did recently say that we have quite the most impressive safe of any church in the deanery…

    May 12th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
  9. ash says:

    This is strange. I didn’t think you needed faculties to bring in non-affixed items of non-ecclesiastical furniature that aren’t in important places… so putting a desk in the vestry seems like something for which you wouldn’t need a faculty, unless you had to attach it to the wall or possibly take down a wall to get it in, if it is a nice big non-flat-pack desk.

    Perhaps they are going to use their altar as a desk… That would need lots of faculties, and probably an Archdeacon’s Visitation.

    May 12th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
  10. Ben says:

    From my understanding of consecration if you just pray for the desk it will all be fine, no faculties needed, but that would mean having to eat it at some point.

    May 12th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
  11. Dave says:

    Chris – I knew it was a ‘faculty’ notice, but I wrote ‘facility’. As my wife has just pointed out it was probably because I had the word ‘facility’ in my mind from later in the notice. Thanks anyway!

    May 13th, 2007 at 12:13 am
  12. Aaron says:

    Perhaps it’s a very, very, very Olde Deske, on which Thomas Cranmer worked out the last few Articles or something. I could see needing a faculty (and perhaps even some facilities) to use such a revered item of furniture for folding Parish Plant Sale order forms.

    May 13th, 2007 at 4:19 am