Brecon Roof Tops, St Mary's Tower & Pen y Fan 3.jpeg

The Beacon Project

A Transformative Vision for St Mary’s Brecon

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude . . . It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

The Beacon Project is a bold programme of mission and capital development at St Mary’s Church, Brecon. It will transform our ministry in Brecon while also contributing to the Brecon Beacons National Park’s ambition to transform Brecon into “a place synonymous with inspirational activity, linked to local excellence in the creative arts and the inspiring experience of the landscape setting.” The Beacon Project will also take advantage of St Mary’s heritage and location in the centre of Brecon to offer residents, tourists, and pilgrims a vibrant centre for community support, wellbeing, culture, and the arts.

Support an Exciting New Community Initiative

Improving the Children’s Play Area at St Mary’s

The play area in our children is enormously important to a large number of young families in and around Brecon. Almost every day it is filled with parents enjoying the Tower Cafe while their children play in a safe place. But it’s in need to rejuvenation. So, people from Brecon have taken it upon themselves to start an initiative to improve and maintain the area. If you would like to support their work, please make a donation to purchase new toys, children’s furniture, and items for activities.

DONATE

“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

— 1 Corinthians 13.13

A Beacon of Faith, Hope, and Love . . .

St Mary’s has stood in the centre of Brecon since at least the twelfth century when it was founded by the monks of Brecon Priory as a chapel-of-ease. Its size, however, is testimony to the fact that it was never simply a chapel—for much of its history it was probably Brecon’s de facto parish church. But it was not until 1923 that it formally became a parish and received its first vicar. As we enter our centenary year as a parish, we will seek to transform our church into a beacon of faith, hope, and love where people can encounter the risen Christ and be transformed by his love.

. . . in the Heart of Brecon

St Mary’s Church stands in a prominent position in the centre of town where St Mary’s Street and High Street converge. It is flanked by art galleries, pubs, shops, cafés, and our imposing sixteenth-century tower is visible from miles away. Because of its prominent position, a community-focused and vibrant St Mary’s is integral to any plans for the transformation of Brecon. The Beacon Project will seek to make our property a true asset to the civic life of Brecon by becoming a place of support, community, art, and performance in the heart of Brecon.

A Transformative Vision for St Mary’s Brecon

Build

Although St Mary’s Church is a much loved and frequently used building, it needs both an uplift and more areas of flexible space for use by the community and local charities for meetings and other activities. We are now exploring affordable ways of achieving redevelopment of the interior to create:
More attractive worship space that can accommodate our growing congregations;
Better café experience so that St Mary’s continues to be a warm and welcoming place throughout the week;
Flexible space for offices, meetings, and activities.
We intend to do this in ways that are deeply sympathetic to the building’s character and heritage.
Serve

As much as we treasure our building, it isn’t the church. The people who gather here to worship and serve others are. All our intended building works will aim at supporting St Mary’s ministry and community engagement. To this end, we will begin by forming three teams of service:
St Luke’s Guild, which is responsible for providing pastoral care and support.
St Martha’s Guild, which is responsible for organizing fellowship and hospitality.
St Eluned’s Guild, which is responsible for ensuring excellent worship.
These guilds will also cooperate in reaching out to the Brecon community.
Finance

None of our aims is achievable or sustainable without reliable financial support. The costs for keeping the church building open, maintaining its fabric, and funding our ministries are high. Obtaining funding and creating new streams of income for new ministries and building work require strategic thinking and long-term planning.
We believe that we can move St Mary’s towards financial self-sufficiency within the next five years.
Work is already underway to establish a Friends of St Mary’s Brecon that will help to maintain the building and encourage wider use of St Mary’s by the town community. And position St Mary’s better as a place for concerts and events.

Public Consultation

Planning for the Future While Cherishing the Past

In 2023 and the beginning of 2024, the Beacon Project Committee collaborated with others to draw up a Statement of Needs to determine what we believed needs to be done to make our building more attractive for worship and more inviting as a community space. We approached almost twenty architects in Wales and the Borders before shortlisted three potential firms. In the summer of 2023, we selected KODA Architects, based in Hereford, and have been working with them since then to create the initial architectural proposals for wider consultation., This phase of The Beacon Project was launched on 19 June 2024 with a presentation and Q&A session to which around 120 people came.

The Initial Proposal

In this video, you can see the 3-D illustrations of our proposal. They broadly fall into three categories: exterior, worship space, and cafe.

Proposed changes to the exterior would open up the building to make it more inviting while also making the north entrance more accessible.
The main feature of the worship space will be the reclamation of the chancel for Sunday worship, the levelling of the floors, and improving flooring, lighting, and seating.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the proposal are improvements to the Tower Cafe that would create a full commercial kitchen, introduce a mezzanine level for dining, and a new play area.

Initial Feedback & Concerns

The responses from our consultation were overwhelmingly positive. Most people saw the huge potential our cherished building has to be both a vibrant church and a much-loved community space that is tidy, beautiful, and welcoming. But concerns were raised about our proposal to the exterior and how this might affect the Second World War memorial (garden area) and the traffic flow from Steeple Lane to Church Lane. As a result of those concerns, we have developed a new plan that allows for the area to be opened up while also drawing better attention to the fact that the garden is itself a war memorial. The names of our World War II fallen will be inscribed in the paving stones that will mark the boundary of St Mary’s property.

Next Steps

The Beacon Project Committee is now working with the architect to consult with various experts and technicians to develop the plans in further details. We will soon begin the process of seeking necessary permissions for our works and devising a strategy for achieving our goals in a timely fashion, probably through a phased approach to fundraising and construction. We have also begun exploring ways that we can highlight our church’s heritage by telling the stories of the people who have worshipped here over the centuries.

We will continue to keep everyone informed about the process through our website, social media, and displays within the church itself. We are committed to producing an achievable architectural design that meets the needs of the church, cafe, and community and will make Brecon proud of its historic and much-loved town centre church.