After many years of excellent service on 16th April 2022, Chris Hawkings will be relinquishing his role as a trustee and Vice Chairman of Somerset Churches Trust. Those involved with the trust during Chris’s tenure will appreciate that he has worked diligently and effectively to promote the trusts’ stated aims and objectives. Fellow trustees would like to express sincere gratitude to Chris for that dedication.
Chris will have served 11 years as a trustee and under the terms of the Trust Deed must stand down. He has been involved with the trust since 2009 when, following his retirement from Ecclesiastical Insurance as a Senior Surveyor, he took up the role of Ride+Stride Organiser, at the suggestion of his wife Gill, who was Membership Secretary at the time. Chris held this position until 2017, during which time over £140,000 was raised for Churches in Somerset.
From 2011 until 2017 Chris was a member of the National Ride+Stride Standing Committee working with the National Churches Trust, and suggested the inclusion of “for churches” in the national Ride+Stride logo, having realised that the media really had no idea what the event was all about.
In 2017 Chris obtained a grant of £30,00 from Allchurches Trust allowing Somerset Churches Trust to make grants to 23 churches to help them install roof alarms following a huge upsurge in the theft of lead from our churches.
Over the years, Chris has played a part in various aspects of the work of the trust, including involvement with the relaunch of Friends of Somerset Churches and Chapels as Somerset Churches Trust in 2013 and the development and launch of the trust’s new website in 2021.
Chris says “It has been a great privilege to be involved with the trust and to play a small part in the preservation and improvement to widen the community use of our wonderful Somerset churches.”
New volunteers to help and support the work of the trust are most welcome to make themselves known and in the first instance, please make contact here