Project 450 is St Mary Redcliffe’s major facilities development initiative. The project, which has been in process since 2013, will create a new visitor welcome, cafe and shop at street level alongside new spaces for exhibition and interpretation, improve access to the historical church and open up currently inaccessible areas to the public, revamp the visitor experience and make the church a more attractive place to visit for a wider range of people. A significant heritage component of Project 450 will be to provide a new home for William Hogarth’s St Mary Redcliffe altarpiece, which is currently stored in St Nicholas’ Church. 

The overall aims of the project are to present the church and its history to as wide an audience as possible, support the worshipping community, promote music and cultural events in church, provide opportunities and support for local people, and achieve long-term sustainability, helping to secure one of England’s finest churches for future generations. 

Project 450 is overseen by the P450 Project Board - a committee of individuals with professional experience in areas pertinent to the project, such as planning, fundraising, architecture, heritage and project management that reports to the PCC (Parochial Church Council). 

Since 2020, planning for Project 450 has slowed down to take account of changing financial and social conditions caused by Covid. During this time, work has focused on testing the projects main financial components - the business plan and fundraising strategy - to ensure that the project is realistic and realisable. 

Project 450 has made significant progress during the last six months, a period that began with the appointment of Alex Notay - Placemaking and Investment Director at Thriving Investments (formerly PfP Capital) - as Chair of the Project Board. Alex, who is also a member of the congregation and PCC, brings significant international experience of planning, project management and placemaking to achieve tangible benefits for communities. 

Since 2020, when a planning pre-app for was submitted to Bristol City Council, the project team has been engaged in a process of iterative consultation with Bristol Planning Office to ensure that the Project 450 scheme that is eventually presented for planning is consistent with planning policy, responds to feedback from statutory stakeholders such as Historic England and has the best chance of achieving planning consent. 

During 2022, to support this process, Avison Young was appointed as planning consultant for Project 450. Since then, Sally Davis, Associate Director at Avison Young, and has been offering advice on planning policy, arranging consultation with stakeholders and representing the church consultations with the planning department that will inform Bristol Local Plan. 

During autumn 2023, the project team visited City Hall to meet with Bristol City Council’s new Director of Planning, Simone Wilding and Pete Insole, Head of Urban Design and Principal Historic Environment Officer at the council. During this meeting - which was very positive - a series of next steps were agreed, including a geo-spatial archaeological investigation of the churchyard to inform planning for the new buildings. 

Also involved in this meeting were Kate Newnham and Julia Carver, curatorial representatives of Bristol Museums - owners of Hogarth’s altarpiece - with whom the P450 project team is working to plan for the rehousing of the work. Discussions are also taking place about displaying some of the many other items from Bristol Musuems’ collections that are pertinent to the history of St Mary Redcliffe, such as the Braikenridge collection of images and archival documents. A further outcome of the workshop at City Hall was that the museums team would support the P450 project team in producing a study that will measure the potential impact on the church’s core and target audiences of plans to improve access to the heritage of St Mary Redcliffe. These findings will inform P450 planning and support funding applications relating to the project. 

Since Christmas, The Fundraising Practice, a team of experienced fundraising consultants, has been working on behalf of the church to provide a detailed analysis of the local, national and international funding landscape that will help the church determine a realistic budget for Project 450. This work will form an updated Fundraising Strategy and Plan that will be delivered in March. 

In a parallel process, members of the staff team, James Rodliff (Head of Operations), Rhys Williams (Heritage Development Manager) and Ellie Bowes (Visitor Services and Commercial Manager) have recently been working on an updated version of the Project 450 Business Plan, the first iteration of which was completed by Glevum Consultants prior to Covid. Building on Glevum’s work, this document will be key in providing a firm foundation for the development of activities during the coming years as we build towards the creation of our new facilities.