Christchurch

About

Christchurch stands on Pinfold Lane in Pointon, a village in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, about 7 miles north of Bourne. Pointon forms part of the ecclesiastical parish of Pointon and Sempringham; the ancient parish church, St Andrew's, stands a mile or so away in the fields near Sempringham, so Christchurch has long served as the more accessible place of worship for the village itself.

It is a rare surviving "tin tabernacle" — a church built of softwood timber and corrugated iron, a construction method popular in the Victorian era for quickly and cheaply providing places of worship in growing or outlying communities. Because it has heating, which St Andrew's does not, Christchurch has traditionally served as Sempringham's "winter church."

History

Christchurch was built in 1892–93 as a chapel of ease to St Andrew's, Sempringham, to the design of A. C. Wood, an architect based in Grantham. Kelly's Directory of Lincolnshire (1919) records it simply as "an iron structure," noting that a Wesleyan chapel also served the village at the time.

The building has been kept in active use and good repair through a series of community-led renovations: a toilet extension was added in 2012, the north aisle was rebuilt in 2016 along with a new servery, the roof was replaced in 2017, and the south aisle was taken down and rebuilt in 2019 — work that has set the church up for continued use for decades to come.

Christchurch remains a multi-use community building today, furnished with modern upholstered chairs and electric heating alongside its historic timber-and-corrugated-iron structure.