Welcome to Cornwall Historic Churches Trust
About Us
CHCT’s essential task is to support the historic fabric of religious buildings throughout the Duchy. Parishes can apply to us for funds which will go towards the restoration and repairs of Cornish churches.
Read more here
Grants
We offer grants, primarily for fabric repairs, to Cornish churches of all denominations which are used as places of worship. Unfortunately we cannot help closed churches or chapels.
Read more here.
Savills have sponsored our Christmas party since its inception in 2006 and this year they have continued that support even though the event cannot go ahead. Our heartfelt thanks goes to them.
2020 marks the “Crystal Anniversary” for the CHCT, an occasion worth celebrating. It also marks the 15th year that Savills have been able to offer support. Savills recognize the importance of this charity, its efforts to preserve the heritage of our County and our rural communities resonates with our organization, and never more so than during this extraordinary year.
To Savills, this isn’t just about the need to support the rural community; the Christmas party is such an enjoyable event in Savills’ calendar, one that not only affords us a chance for many of our team to meet up with friends and clients, but also marks the “end of term”– because invariably we sign-off for our Christmas break the following day!
You say – “thanks” to us, and we say, “well, thanks for having us”.
GET INVOLVED

Beating the bounds at Ladock
Why your support is essential
To enable us to offer the invaluable assistance for the preservation of our Cornish heritage, we need every church in the Duchy to support and work with us so that we can be there for all in times of need.
To support more projects, we need more funds and your community can help. If each of our 218 parishes could fundraise just £100 a year for CHCT we would have in excess of £20,000 additional funding to offer annually. Find out more here.
Cornwall Churches Day
Our main fundraising event is Cornwall Churches Day which can be held at any time during the year. We hope all parishes will get involved and raise some essential funds for both themselves and CHCT.
Find out more here.
Next CHCT Event

The Christmas Party will be back in 2021!
We are hoping to get back to normal as soon as we can.
In the meantime why not take a virtual trip around some of Cornwall’s historic churches here or if you fancy a day out why not try one of our Drive About Trails.
Next Community Event

We do not have any details of community fundraising events at the moment but will post them here as soon as they come in.
Recent Fundraising
A huge thank you to all the communities who raised funds for us last year and hoping to build on this success this year. Your support really does make a difference and together we can help to keep Cornish churches & chapels open for future generations.
See recent fundraising results here.
EXPLORE CORNISH CHURCHES
Church Histories
Over the years, CHCT has been encouraging individual parishes to write a local history of their church. This is a short, informative piece and is written by the local parish with the help of our historian and archivist.
Is your local church missing from the archive? Full details of how to send us your information are included in the archive here.

Arches in the Decorated Style
Reading Cornish Churches
Over the past three years, thanks to Joanna Mattingly, we have been privileged to be addressed by renowned experts on different stages of church architectural development. To date we have worked through the Romanesque, Early English and Decorated periods. In 2021 we hope to move on to Perpendicular period. We have records of the lecture notes from each talk which you can view here.

Visit an interesting selection of churches on a guided drive
Drive About Tours
The annual driveabouts are created by Carole Vivian as a way of discovering 3-4 churches in a day. She writes about the history of the buildings and features to look out for and directs you from one church to another with suggestions for good places to stop for lunch en route. Trails from previous years are available for a donation of £5. Find out more here.