AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

As the restora­tion of the St Fran­cis of As­sisi RC Church nears com­ple­tion, there is a fi­nal push to raise the nec­es­sary funds.

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Trust of T&T, the church, lo­cat­ed at Cir­cu­lar Road, Bel­mont, is eas­i­ly recog­nised as a pil­lar of his­toric sig­nif­i­cance in the com­mu­ni­ty.

For phase one of the restora­tion, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5.7 mil­lion was raised over the last decade, but the Bel­mont Fundrais­ing Com­mit­tee re­alised more work need­ed to be done. Com­mit­tee mem­bers said they hope the restora­tion process will be com­plet­ed soon to avoid fur­ther de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the build­ing which has not been in use for the past 12 years.

“The bell tow­er suf­fered a lot of dam­age in the last big earth­quake that we had and that has not been re­stored as yet. That is one of the big things that have to hap­pen in this next phase,” said ar­chi­tect Rudy­lynn De Four-Roberts.

Phase two is ex­pect­ed to in­clude con­struc­tion of a ramp for bet­ter ac­cess, restora­tion of the sanc­tu­ary and in­stal­la­tion of stained glass win­dows.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­mit­tee, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4 mil­lion is need­ed to en­sure the orig­i­nal ar­chi­tec­tur­al style of the build­ing is pre­served, such as the two and a half feet thick lime­stone walls.

“The whole point is to re­store as close as pos­si­ble to the orig­i­nal so that fu­ture gen­er­a­tions un­der­stand the ma­te­ri­als, un­der­stand what was used and why it was used and can learn about tech­nol­o­gy at the time it was built and how build­ings were de­signed and en­gi­neered at the time,” De Four-Roberts said.

“With restora­tions, there are al­ways un­knowns. We open up some­thing and we sud­den­ly find some­thing that we didn’t know was there that you couldn’t see, just with your eyes look­ing at the sur­face.”

The com­mit­tee in­tends to host a se­ries of fundrais­ing events this year and hopes the church’s doors will be able to re­open in time for Christ­mas.