Arts Church
St Peter’s Arts Church on Cowleigh Bank in Malvern, is a beautiful place of worship that also hosts arts events and musical performances. After closure for the past year, its open again following some important refurbishment work. Jane James, who’s the churchwarden, tells us more.
2025 got off to a shaky start when the gas heating system failed its annual check and was condemned. We had no heating and hoped that spring would come early. This past winter we decamped to Northleigh primary school for our Sunday service. In the meantime, we started visiting other churches to check out their heating systems!
We settled on an air-to-air source pump system, which blows warm air around the church, extracting the heat from outside. It was installed in March this year and we are very pleased. It is very efficient and we can use it as an air conditioning system in the summer if it gets too hot.
In the meantime, St Peter’s has had a makeover. We have swapped the motley collection of units at the back of the church with a sleek refreshments counter. The old stained carpet has been pulled up to reveal beautiful Victorian floor tiles. Quietly and steadily, the congregation has worked together to transform the building while it was out of action.
Now that we are back at St Peter’s with effective modern heating, we plan to relaunch SPARC: St Peter’s Arts Church. We hope to work in partnership with a range of local organisations and people to promote creative engagement with a range of arts and crafts. Options might include partnerships on the music events front, makers markets together with local artists and makers groups, regular cafés with homemade goodies, beer festivials, and hosting workshops and activities together with local creatives.
We started the Friends of St Peters, which is a group interested in supporting the buildings and grounds of St Peters. Activities include regular Tidy up the Churchyard mornings. It’s amazing how much a dozen volunteers can achieve in a couple of hours and it’s fun too. Our next session is on Tuesday 2nd June. Come at 10am and bring your own tools for a couple of hours of tidying. Drinks and flapjacks are provided!
Worship takes place every Sunday between 11.15am and Midday, an informal friendly service starting and finishing with drinks and cake. Everyone is welcome.
Lastly, I would like to thank the Malvern Hills District Council who provided us with a Legacy Grant for much of the work.
To receive regular newsletters with updates of what’s happening, contact Jane by email: Jane@mlwc.church