St Martin-in-the-Fields stands on the north-eastern corner of Trafalgar Square, originally designed by James Gibbs and completed in 1726, then extended by John Nash a century later. For the last hundred years, St Martin’s has looked beyond its own doors and played an active role in wider social, humanitarian and international issues, including The Connection at St Martin’s, which fights homelessness, caring for 7,500 individuals each year.
The project to revitalize St Martin’s involved a complete restoration of the original church and the creation of new facilities across the site for meetings, social care, treatment and performance, to a design by Eric Parry Architects.
MRC helped to establish a governance structure and funding strategy for the project, leading to a role to oversee the design development and applications for planning permission and the various church permissions. We established a strategic pre-construction plan and managed the joint client and consultant team in drawing-up a major grant application to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
Working closely with the St Martin-in-the-Fields Development Trust and numerous consultants we eventually secured, what was at the time, the largest grant ever to a church of £15.8m.
We helped appoint and manage the professional team and continued to provide a strategic overview to the development of the project, serving on the client project boards and managing ongoing contact with the HLF. We worked closely with the in-house team and especially with the CEO, providing development advice and monitoring project governance. We were retained as development advisor to St Martin’s overseeing the redevelopment scheme to final delivery.
St Martin-in-the-Fields won an award for the ‘Best Restoration of a Georgian Church’ from the Georgian Group in 2007 and was a 2009 RIBA award winner.
