Historic Norwich church could become art studio under new plan
The St Mary Coslany church dates back almost a thousand years
An historic city church which dates back almost a thousand years could become a studio for budding artists.
A community group wants to turn St Mary Coslany church in Norwich into an art space, with a public gallery for people to display their work.
The building, next to the city’s Junkyard Market, has had a chequered history, having fallen into disrepair and being restored several times.
It was declared redundant as a church in 1971 and was later taken over by a craft and design centre and more recently a publishing services company and internet book-seller.
The new plans, submitted by the Coslany Gallery and Art Space community interest company (CIC), will see the building split into 12 self-contained arts spaces.
A planning statement submitted to Norwich City Council said: “The plan includes provision of a new, high quality, visual arts and crafts public exhibition space at the western end of the nave: the Coslany Gallery, to which the existing spacious architectural attributes of the building are ideally suited, with public access and toilet facilities.
“The CIC aims to encourage and provide opportunities for aspiring, upcoming, early career and established Norfolk artists and crafts practitioners; along with a community gallery with free public access.”
St Mary is the last surviving medieval round-towered church in the city, with some others destroyed by bombing in the Second World War.
St Benedict’s round tower survives, but not its church.
St Mary Coslany has existed since the early 11th century. It was rebuilt in the 15th century with extensive restoration in the early 1900s.
Heritage website Norfolk Churches says of St Marys: “St Mary Coslany is one of the thirty-six or so surviving medieval parish churches in the centre of Norwich, it is so old that it actually predates that time, and was probably the original parish church of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Coslany.
“Even after the 1908 restoration, the tower had not been considered safe enough to ring the bells, and in 1937 they were taken down and rehung in the massive new church of St Catherine at Mile Cross.”