Let’s Knit a Scarf to Keep the Church Warm!

St Michael and All Angels’ Church stands in the centre of Macclesfield. It is a tremendous community resource – open every day for visitors, with a cafe, a surplus food café, concerts, exhibitions, events, etc., in addition to formal worship and prayer on Sundays and on Monday, Thursday and Friday mornings.

However, the building, which dates originally to the 16th century, is largely Victorian, and is vast and expensive to maintain. Its heating system is old, unreliable and expensive, especially as energy costs have soared. The congregation is expected to fund both the maintenance of the building and all running costs.

This particular fund-raising initiative arose from the church's Eco-Group and is intended to draw attention to the situation in a creative and fun way and to raise money for an improved heating system and, longer term, for such initiatives as solar panels on the large south-facing roof.

We hope people will both donate to our project and will also assist us in achieving our aim of knitting enough scarves to create one enormous scarf to encircle the whole building (literally wrapping it up to “keep it warm”!). The length of the final scarf needs to be approximately 150m. Individual scarves will be sewn loosely together to create the final version, and there will be a grand “wrapping up ceremony” on 29th September 2024 (St Michael’s Day).

Afterwards the scarves will be separated and sold off, to raise more funds.

As part of our eco-initiatives, we hope that people will donate any leftover balls of wool to assist the knitters by recycling what might otherwise have gone to waste!