Holy water

20/06/2007

A 14th century church has drinking water on tap for the first time in its history thanks to a community initiaitive.

A water supply has been installed to the Church of St Mary at Buttsbury, Essex by water workers as part of Essex & Suffolk Water’s ‘Just an hour’ initiative.

This initiative enables employees to devote at least 12 hours of work time to an approved community cause and is designed to improve local communities and the environment.

A team from the distribution department at Hanningfield Water Treatment Works took a day to install the supply.

The church, which is situated on Ingatestone Road, has not had running water for 700 years and parishioners had to bring water with them. 
 
Wendy Brown, from Billericay has previously bought water to the church to tend to the graves of her    grandparents and uncle but the new standpipe now means this job will be much easier.

Wendy said: “This water supply if great news. Watering the flowers will be so much easier now. This also means that we will have an instant supply of water for the flowers in the church, open days and christenings.”

Concrete slabs for the footpath leading to the standpipe were donated to the project by Essex & Suffolk Water’s reinstatement contractors, Cooks.

Neal Warren, distribution operations manager said: “We were delighted to be able to help the church with its request for a running water supply.  The church has a small congregation and it would have been very difficult for them to finance the water supply on their own.

“The team thoroughly enjoyed working spending a day working on this project - there was a real sense of team spirit.”

Bryan Shedel, church warden added: “We are so very grateful for the new water supply.

“Everyone is overjoyed and it will make life much easier.”

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For further information please contact Claire Bishop on 01245 212 010.