Binding church and the community together

The Friends of St Laurence's Church, Chorley, is a charitable cause and dedicated group of supporters who work to preserve the Church building, enhance it's facilities for the community and ensure it's future as an asset for Chorley.  Our role is to preserve and develop this continuing symbol of our communal life. Please join with us in ensuring that St Laurence's Church continues to play a central role in the life of our town.

St Laurence's Church is a grade 2* listed building with a late medieval tower, and a number of Victorian and later additions.  
If you have any stories about the Church, we'd love to hear from you. Please contact us at friends@stlaurencechorley.co.uk 
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Introduction

Friends of St. Laurence's was founded in January 2019 and has since been granted charitable status; the charity number is 1186760. The objectives of the charitable trust are as follows;
  • To raise funds for the care and maintenance of the buildings of St.Laurence's Church, Chorley. 
  • To promote the use of the church buildings as a community asset available for use by the local affinity groups and other appropriate organisations. 
  • To exploit the opportunities offered by new technology to engage with a wider audience in the UK and overseas, raising awareness of the role of the church and its buildings in the history of Chorley and the surrounding areas and their significance for the identity of the town today. 
In setting up the FOSL, the Parochal Church Council (PCC) recognised that the regular congregation, could not be expected to cover the costs of repairing and maintaining ancient church buildings and developing facilities to meet the expanding need for secular services on top of the day-to-day expenditure for running the parish. The FOSL strap line "Binding the Church and Community Together", expresses the objective of convincing the wider community that they have an interest in preserving these buildings do that continue to contribute to the wellbeing of local people and play an essential role in the daily life of the town. In line with this concept, FOSL funding would be used for longer term capital projects as proposed to routine building maintenance. 

Projects

The Friends of St Laurence’s have been asked by the PCC to undertake two major projects:

Videos from Friends of St. Laurence's

The Friends of St Laurence are producing a series of short, 3 minute, videos which tell you all about our various services for vulnerable people in our local community and other activities continuing a tradition that goes back hundreds of years. We will be adding to these each month until we have a library covering the full range of the Church’s work both sacred and secular, emphasising that we are open and available for everyone who needs us.
 
FOSL is very grateful to Jack Pemberton for producing the videos and Steffany Collette for managing the website.
You can help us fund our projects and preserve our historic church by clicking DONATE NOW. All contributions most gratefully received. 

Corporate & Charitable Donors

Friend's of St. Laurence's is most grateful to the following corporate donors for their generous contributions to our appeal:
E.H. Booth & Co. LTD
G.A. Petfoods
Chorley Building Society
B. Livesey LTD
In Memoriam
The following individuals made donations in memory of departed friends and members of the St. Laurence Congregation:
Anthony Christopher in memoriam Ed Fisher
Chris Livesey in memoriam Harold West & Philip Staziker
Anthony Christopher in memoriam Judith Angela Christopher