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Camden New Journal - By DAN CARRIER
Published: 7 June 2007

Truckles manager Lyndsey Hall with Father Perry Butler and the money-raising roast beef lunch

Slice of diners’ roast beef helps restore £9m church

PLATES of roast beef are helping to fund the restoration of an 18th- century Hawksmoor church in Bloomsbury.
St George’s Church, which is in the midst of a £9 million restoration, is being helped with the final phase by neighbouring restaurant Truckles, in Bury Place, which is donating cash from every roast beef lunch and dinner it sells.
The final phase, which will cost just under £1 million, will see the north gallery rebuilt and the south remodelled to match.
The Grade-I listed church in Bloomsbury Way is one of eight Sir John Hawksmoor-
designed buildings built under the auspices of a Queen Anne church-building programme. Six have survived.
Father Perry Butler said: “The work has been delayed. We originally hoped it would be finished at the same time as the exterior, but there were very few pictures or drawings of Hawksmoor’s original design.
“It took some strenuous research to find out how it would have looked and there was some disagreement among the architects over how Hawksmoor originally envisaged the interior.”
The church has a permanent exhibition in its undercroft tracing the church’s history, from the laying of foundations nearly 300 years ago to the work being done today.
Father Butler added: “The point was not just to restore the church but to open it up for the people who live and work in the area.
“We had real problems in and around the church with rough sleepers and drug addicts. By restoring the church we are helping the neighbourhood.”

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