Jack & Verity: ready to open Christchurch Community Centre, Highbury N5

Everyone has a story. For the past three years Verity Baldry has spent much of her time making the dream of a new Christchurch Community Centre actually happen – from funding to furnishing as one of the project managers for this new community building. While Jack Tomkins from Vent Coffee has been exploring ways to bring his red tuk tuk coffee truck business outside the church inside the new centre. Here Islington Faces finds out how they are feeling just days before the centre opens on Easter Sunday 2022. Interview and photos by Nicola Baird

“At first it’s impossible. Then it’s difficult. Finally, it’s done,” says Verity Baldry with a certain amount of relief holding a cup of tea in her hand provided by Jack from Vent Coffee’s tuk tuk coffee truck. She’s standing outside Christchurch in the shadow of the iconic clock tower looking at the soon-to-be-open new community building that’s been funded by the Christ Church parishioners.

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The million pound project has transformed an unloved corner of the Vicarage garden into an elegant D-shape one storey building with a grass roof and eco-credentials. It’s very much an Islington achievement as architect Matthew Lloyd is part of the congregation and Verity, who lives in Plimsoll Road has been co-chairing the organising committee for the past seven years, and since October 2020 is the Church Warden. You can see more about the original site and building plans – including photos – on the builders Haynes & Smith’s website.

“The Victorian-built Christchurch will continue to be in use for church services, and the many events that have been held in the assembly rooms including the nursery and memory café will continue as normal,” says Verity who is mum of two children with a background in tech start-ups. Whilst being part of the small team overseeing this project she’s also just spent the past year completing an MA in Creative Writing, specialising in poetry.

Verity and the team have devised a third, third, third model to work out how to use and finance the new space:

1. Part is for Christchurch activities including church office space, faith led groups, prayer meditation, a homework club and an elderly lunch club. There is also a small food bank.
2. Then there will be charity and community group use which Verity says is up to locals to say how they’d like to make use of it, “it’s our gift to help people make more impact”.
3. Finally, there’s the commercial opportunities from renting the back room for yoga and celebrations – birthdays, baptisms, weddings, funerals. Enquiries are welcome.

 

With such a broad scope for use there’s a high chance that you’ll soon be enjoying the new space. But you won’t be the first visitors, that went to the blue tits who moved into the bird boxes very soon after they were secured to the building.

Highbury gets a new café
Jack Tomkins has been running a café beside Christchurch Vicarage and Church Path (which crosses Highbury Fields) since 2016. For the past six years self-confessed “coffee nut” Jack has been serving Highbury with coffee outside the church, but when the Christchurch Community Centre opens at Easter he will run its café.

Jack, 32, a former Highbury Grove student has featured on Islington Faces before, see this interview from October 2016 https://www.islingtonfacesblog.com/2016/10/26/jack-tomkins-the-daily-grind-barista/

“I found out we had won the tender on 14 January so the past three months have been very busy,” says Jack beaming. He’s just taken delivery of tree-like outdoor chairs for the outside space and is clearly able to multi-task, serving coffee while chatting about the next stage of his coffee shop life.

“The whole family – Mum, Dad, my brother Alfie who works here and my other half, Leanne and her Dad Mick, have put all hands on deck,” he says. When the café opens his plan is to serve grab-and-go coffee from the Tuk Tuk from 8-10am outside for in-a-rush customers and then move indoors for the people who want to stop and smell the coffee. To get to this stage he’s been ordering café chairs, dreaming up chicken sandwiches (meat, veggie and vegan) and understanding the small print of VAT on hot food (or not). “I’ll also be employing three new members of staff from the Restart programme which will help them move off Universal Credit.”

Once Vent Café is established indoors Jack has plans to increase his speciality range of coffees. He’d also like to offer some board game nights, offering Warhammer and other classic table-top games, “as the nearest place to play is either Stratford or Archway.”

When you next pass that bit of N5 pop in to admire the new building, see what’s on offer and say hello because this community centre is meant for all of us around Highbury. Welcome!

• Christchurch Community Centre can be open from 8am-10pm – see noticeboard and website for info https://www.christchurchhighbury.com/
• The café, run by Vent Coffee, will be open daily from 8am-6pm. See insta @ventcoffeeco
• The opening will be on Easter Sunday, 17 April 2022 from 4-6pm. Join to see the Mayor of Islington cut the ribbon with new Archdeacon Pete from Stepney. Everyone is welcome and there will be refreshments (the café will also be open).

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com.  If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola