Having closed from August 2015 for 12 months, and re-opening on Sunday 31st July 2016, the congregation were introduced to a fully refurbished, multi-use space, fit for the 21st century.  A special service of "Rededication and Thanksgiving after Refurbishment and Reordering" was held on 27th November 2016.  The Right Reverend Mark Sowerby presided over the service, and summed it up beautifully "Really splendid reordering - architecture is allowed to speak for itself again".

The pictures below have been assembled into an archive to celebrate 10 years, of the re-ordering, and provide a reminder and thank you to all those who planned, and worked on site to allow that architecture and stonework to "speak for itself again".

One of the first questions visitors ask on entering a church is, “How old is it?”

This seems straightforward, but the answer is surprisingly complex. The situation is similar to the Ship of Theseus paradox, which asks whether an object remains the same if all its parts are gradually replaced. A more familiar illustration is Trigger’s broom from Only Fools and Horses: although he had replaced the head 17 times and the handle 14 times, Trigger still claimed it was the same broom.

In the case of St Peter and St Paul’s, parts of the present building date back over 900 years, to around 1100. It is believed that an even earlier Saxon church stood on the same site sometime between the late 7th and mid-10th centuries. That building would have been constructed of wattle and daub with a thatched roof, similar to the huts at the Singleton Open-Air Museum. No visible remains of this Saxon church survive today.