Charging for admission

The Church Times has had a couple of weeks of correspondence about charging for admission to cathedrals and I was wondering when someone would get round to us. On 13 March Robin Saunders reported the experience of having to admit, reluctantly, that you have come for prayer rather than as a tourist and then being

"escorted, like some highly infectious patient, to a side chapel used as an isolation ward to keep the real users of the cathedral, the tourists, from being contaminated by any suspicion of non-secular values."

The Revd Brian Cranwell thought Mr Saunders' observations "timely and apposite" and he cited the unwillingness of York Minster to allow the consecration of the Bishop of Sheffield on a weekday because of loss of income from tourism. Dr Robin Richmond moved the question to parish churches. (When will we be mentioned? I wondered.) He wrote of the many parish churches who "also see themselves as tourist sites rather than places of worship" with little mention in their literature about the building as a holy place.

We had a staff review of charging this morning, after a week of very high income from visiting groups. We decided that we had it about right. We have changed our external notices to stress that there is no charge for services or prayer (and we don't start charging until 9.30 a.m.). The verger/doorkeepers are very alert to this. We felt that we should give them greater discreton in allowing groups in at a discounted price if they just turned up without knowing about the charge. There is a chapel dedicated to private prayer but you don't have to go there to pray. What we ask is that visitors don't go into that chapel and disturb those who are praying. The new history boards in the Cloister make much of our Christian inheritance and the video shows the building in use for a variety of services.

As we finished the review I received an e-mail drawing my attention to Robert Crampton's Notebook article in todays Times, entitled "I'll pay to see Hugh Grant thumped", which is about a visit to St Bartholomew's, and he is very very nice about us. You can read it on http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/robert_crampton/article5962488.ece (I'm sorry that I haven't mastered link insertion; I did try.)

We will keep charging under review but it does provide both a vitally important income stream and employment for two people.