Places of worship
The Pilgrim Trust has supported the maintenance and repair of listed historic places of worship for many years. We recognise the vital role that places of worship play in our historic landscape, offering spaces for community gathering, faith and worship, music and art, and quiet reflection. They are often a hub for essential local services.
Maintaining these historic buildings present considerable challenges. Given the need in the sector, our ability to help meet that need, and the availability of other funding sources, we have recently changed our funding policy and no longer fund places of worship open for regular worship apart from the conservation of historic interiors and historic objects as set out below.
Organisations seeking to find sustainable uses for redundant/closed places of worship, please see the section on Historic Buildings and Structures.
We do fund:
- conservation of historic interiors and historic objects in places of worship open for regular worship . These include bells, books and manuscripts, clocks, decorative plasterwork, metalwork and church plate, monuments, organs, paintings on canvas and wood, stained glass, textiles, timberwork, wall paintings and historic structures in churchyards. We also support the commissioning of conservation reports including environmental and technical investigations.
How to apply:
If you are an Anglican church, you must apply via the ChurchCare conservation grants scheme which is part-funded by us.
All other denominations, faiths and cathedrals may apply to us directly.
Where should you apply to?
Buildings
We no longer provide repair grants to places of worship open for active worship. We do consider applications aiming to find sustainable uses for redundant/closed places of worship. Please see Historic Buildings and Structures.
Interiors
Anglican church interiors: visit ChurchCare webpages to check your eligibility.
Other places of worship: follow the application process under ‘How to Apply’.
How to apply
- Take the eligibility quiz and discover if you can apply for one of our grants.
- You will not be able to access our application forms without checking your eligibility.
- All applications must be made on our online grants system, Flexigrant.
- Flexigrant has clear instructions on how to fill in the application forms.
- View a sample Stage One form and a Stage Two form before applying.
- Stage 1: submit key details about your project so that we can check its suitability. You’ll get a response within four weeks.
- Stage 2: set out your application in full. You can apply at any time within 12 months after a successful Stage 1 application.
- If you are applying for £5,000 or less, you should receive a response within 4 weeks.
- If you are applying for over £5,000 our Trustees make final decisions at their quarterly meetings in March, June, September and November. Cut off dates in 2026 are 9 January, 10 April, 31 July, 2 October.
If you have any questions, email us on info@thepilgrimtrust.org.uk.
