St John's Redhill is the home of the first ever Church micro and the new hall was opened in the summer of 2018 and this cache is part of a series of caches which are placed at or near village halls and community centres.
For details and statistics about the Village Hall Series please visit Village Hall Series website
St John's Church realised in the early 1990's that it needed to update it church halls and provide modern facilities for the 21st Century. The first designs were not met with approval from the local authority conservation officer and it took twenty three year, three planning applications and two planning appeals to arrive at the final design and complete construction. Planning permission was finally obtained in October 2012. Construction finally started in October 2015 after a major fund raising exercise by the Church. The new Church Hall and community facility was opened by the Bishop of Southwark at the beining of July 2018. The building compliments the church and is built with Portland stone,flint with a natural slate roof above. There is also a large basement which required a large number of graves to relocated.The church received a design award from the Reigate Society in October 2018. The cache owner was on the design, planning and building committee for 23 years!! If you see him at the church then he will be pleaed to give you a guided tour. When the church last under went major remodelling nearly 140 years ago, unfortunantly there was a tragic accident and two young boys were killed in the construction area. A plaque was incorporated into the wall of the new hall. In order to find the cache you will ned to go to this plaque and obtain some information. A = the age William and George were when they died and BCDE is the year. The cache is a short walk away at N51 13 (C-B) B (D-E) W000 10 (C-B) A (A+B) Please take great care when walking to the cache as all the roads are very busy .
PLAQUE STOLEN SEE BELOW The bronze plaque has been stolen - April 2019. Two individuals dressed in hoodies, masks and wearing gloves were caught on the security cameras but as their faces were covered the police cannot do much about the theft! A new stone with zero salvage value will be shortly made to replace the metal one. To the right of where the plaque was positioned, is a pink granite grave stone with details of the Mews family on it. The stone also give the date when a very young boy died and his age. He and a friend were killed when masonry they were playing on collapsed when the Church was being altered the late Victorian period.This will give you all the information you need. Insert numbers as above.I am please to report that there were no accidents during the building of the new hall.
*************************************
If you would like expand the series and place a cache of your own
please request a number using the contact form on the website or email
GeoJaxx at villagehallseries@gmail.com
****
See the bookmark list for all the caches in the series.
Facebook group: Village Hall Series – Geocaching
Disclaimer - As the geocache owner, I ensure that this links to a local geocaching group that is active in the community and contributing to geocaching in positive ways. This link has not been checked by Geocaching HQ or by the reviewer.