Our project team have been working hard getting the message out about the development project and our plans for once the project is completed. Click here to read an interview with Lucinda Williams, Heritage Education and Volunteers officer who is currently recruiting for guides and welcomers.

Those of you who have walked through Radcliffe Square recently will have noticed that work has begun on the development project, with scaffolding climbing up the tower and a fenced ‘compound’ in the square itself. After years of consultations, planning and fund-raising we are now entering into the final exciting but messy phase of the project. The enabling work will continue until the New Year on the outside of the church and then the restoration and development starts properly.The Chancel, De Brome Chapel, Tower, Vestry, Old Library and Cafe will all be closed for a period of six months from January 2012. Last t term we held a full and varied programme of activities, which has been very rewarding. This term, and to some degree the term after, after reflection together as a staff team, we have decided that the church should enter a sort of sabbatical, a time when it will be renewed and restored. We will feel this in our patterns of worship and other activities. As a worshipping community we will continue to gather in the Nave. During this time we will have a sabbatical from the services usually held in the Chancel - the midday and Sunday evening eucharists and evensongs. Sunday evening worshippers will be made welcome in either Oriel or Brasenose chapel, where The Revd Robert Tobin and the Revd Graeme Richardson will be pleased to meet you. Many of the mid-week programmes and special events that we customarily hold will be cancelled during this sabbatical period. We ask for your prayers during this time, for all who will manage, direct and work on the development of St. Mary’s and we ask also for your patience.

Canon Brian Mountford
Vicar of the University Church, Oxford