Coronavirus: How Peterborough Cathedral is ‘feeling the pinch’ financially, uncertainty over re-opening and a positive vision for the future

Canon Ian Black, the Vicar of Peterborough, said plans are “being put together” to help the cathedral recover as it awaits the Government’s go-ahead to re-open following lockdown.

The cathedral has had historical financial problems and has had to furlough 26 members of staff during the pandemic.

Canon Black, who is Canon Residentiary of Peterborough Cathedral and the vicar at St John’s church in Cathedral Square, told former BBC presenter Paul Stainton in his latest ‘lockdown interview’: “It’s a tight year and that’s being monitored to see what additional support there can be. They are having to take a very, very careful look at this.

“We are feeling the pinch - you can’t pretend we’re not. We will have to look at how we can get the additional income in that we need. There are people looking at it now. The plans being put together in order to do that.”

The historic building was forced to close its doors during the crisis, although Canon Black and other members of the clergy have been able to live-stream services for people to watch at home.

He said: “Things have changed dramatically and they’ve changed overnight. One friend referred to it as going from an Odeon model of a church - there’s a show on, you turn up at that time - to a Netflix model where you download when you want to watch it. People are doing that and are going online.

“We did that in the space of two days, so when it was announced there was the lockdown and no public worship permitted, that came at us out of the blue, and I have to give credit to the Church of England’s digital training team because within minutes they had put out the offer of training.

“So on the Tuesday we were locked down, and on the Thursday I attended training by Zoom which I had never heard of before. Now my day is more full of Zoom than anything else!

“I’ve been in St John’s because that’s my primary responsibility and I’m live-streaming from there, and that feels strange going in there and finding the hymn numbers are up from when we shut it down.”

Despite the country easing out of lockdown, there remains plenty of uncertainty for places of worship, although the size of the cathedral and St John’s church makes social distancing possible.

It is expected that they will be allowed to open again from July 4.

Canon Black said: “When we re-open we still don’t really know exactly what we’re going to be dealing with. We don’t know the social distancing measures that will have to be in place.

“The beauty of the cathedral and St John’s is they are big places so we can do social distancing without too much difficulty, although that does reduce the number of people who can come in. What we don’t know, of course, is if people will want to come back as a number of people are still isolating and making sure that they are shielding themselves and will do that for quite a long time.

“What has been hit is income because none of us are receiving any events income or casual visitors. There are no shop sales.

“At St John’s we made a load of payments to some charities from last year’s coffee shop donations and that amounted to around £7,000, and we were able to do that.

“Next year I don’t know if we will make any payments - if the coffee shop doesn’t re-open then nothing will come in. There are these hits which we’re feeling as well as every other business is feeling.”

But despite the difficult times, Canon Black had a hopeful message for how society may look in the future after going through an unprecedented crisis in modern history.

“There are lots of people asking about a more compassionate, a more loving and a more caring society which is not so frenetic, which is not just seeking endless acquiring and grasping of things but is much more generous and gracious and seeing life as a gift,” he added.