SOUTHAMPTON’S mother church is to undergo a £800,000 revamp.

The Diocese of Winchester is to invest £800,000 to renew the iconic St Mary’s Church.

The funding will fund a major building project which will include replacing the roof and repairing the internal fabric of the church.

In addition to the building work, part of the funding will go towards establishing the leadership team at St Mary’s, who will work with the parish congregation to provide support to the community across the city.

The new team will include a new parish priest, the Rev Jon Finch, who will be licensed by the bishop of Southampton later this year.

The building works are scheduled to take place in summer, with new leadership in place by September, when the church will be ready to welcome parishioners new and old.

The Right Rev Jonathan Frost, bishop of Southampton, said: “St Mary’s has a very special role to play at the centre of Southampton.

“This grant will not only fund the building works, which are so important to enable the building to meet the needs of the people it serves, but will also enable us to build a new team to work at the heart of the city.

“Over the summer we will see a great deal of activity at St Mary’s as the building works take place and the new team arrives, and I am looking forward to the next phase of St Mary’s contribution to our local community commencing in September.”

One of the aims of the proposals is to enable St Mary’s to better cater for the student population in the city.

Prof Graham Baldwin, vice-chancellor of Southampton Solent University, said: “We are pleased to hear of the plans to revitalise St Mary’s Church, which sits at the heart of our developing education quarter.

“The university has close links with the church and faith communities locally, and this is good news for our students and the city centre more widely.”

The grant for the scheme has been made available from Winchester Mission Action, the Diocese of Winchester’s plan to engage with young people across Hampshire and East Dorset, bringing the Christian message to people who have not previously interacted with the Church of England.

St Mary’s is the oldest site of continuous Christian worship in Southampton.

The present church was built in the late 19th century by Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, but much of the interior of the church was burned out during the Blitz in 1940 and had to be rebuilt in 1954.