West Torrington is a small village on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds. Like many rural villages, we have lost our community facilities over the years and until recently only had a bus shelter as the nearest thing to an indoor community space - which, as lovely as the bus shelter is, was rather limited...
West Torrington Community & Heritage Action CIO formed to coalesce support to tackle the issues that rural communities face, and to restore long lost community services, all whilst maintaining and protecting heritage assets. We are a registered charity (registration number: 1194154).
We wanted to regain an indoor community space so that we could create a multi-use site for events, heritage skills training opportunities, education, rural community museum, community shop, library, and café.
We finally had our chance when the closed village church, the Church of St Mary, came on to the market in September 2020.
We put forward a bid to secure the space forever for the benefit of the village and beyond and are delighted to say that we finally completed the purchase in May 2024!
To keep up to date with our work and plans please check our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Threads pages
Thomas Wimberley Mossman (1826-1885). The vicar of West Torrington from 1859 to 1885. He was responsible for the restoration of the church, using parts of the earlier medieval church on the same site and was an important and controversial figure in the Oxford Movement, a correspondent of Cardinal Newman, founder of Brotherhood training poor men for the priesthood, noted historian, active Liberal politician and crucial figure in the early Order of Corporate Reunion and Oecumenical movement.