The building was not in a good state of repair and needed a lot of work. The roof was letting in water and most of the larger leaded windows were badly bowed. Over the years a lot of the pointing had deteriorated and some of the stonework, particularly the tracery of the windows had weathered badly. If left, the building would have deteriorated rapidly. Preventing this was referred to as Phase 1, which took place between autumn 2010 and summer 2011.

During this work a new roof was put in place. This enabled the building to start drying out. As a consequence of this there were outbreaks of dry rot which had to be dealt with. All the bowed glass was taken out. The plain ‘cathedral’ glass was completely replaced with new glass. Some of the stained glass only required careful cleaning and minor repair. The rest of the stained glass was restored before putting it back in new lead. However, four windows had been subject to vandalism in the past. Here major work was required, including, in one case, recreating the window from the broken pieces in a black plastic bag! Weathered stone was replaced with new carefully matched stone, and all the pointing was picked out and replaced. The rainwater goods were replaced and finally the algae was removed from the stone surfaces. The building is now wind and watertight and ready for the next century of its life!