Our Vision
Our vision is for St Mary’s and St Richard’s Church, Northolt to be a caring community that clearly loves God and loves Northolt as we become and are, a living and loving example of Christ in our Community. In line with the London Diocese 2030 vision, we want to show compassion to the communities we live and serve in. We want to be confident followers and disciples of Jesus Christ, who glorify God through our worship, Bible study, prayer and service. We want to grow both spiritually and numerically, and we want this growth to show in our actions and words as we care for God’s creation and show Christian love to those we encounter in our community.
Our Context
We are proud of, and cherish, our rich history and we want the history of our church buildings to facilitate a rich encounter with God. We are a diverse worshipping community that represents the community we serve and we strive to make St Mary’s and St Richard’s a place of welcome, Christian flourishing and safety for all. St Mary’s is also known by many as ‘the white church on the hill’ and is visible from the A40. The wonderful building of St Mary’s Northolt was built around 1230AD, and is a Grade 1 listed building. A church may have been on this site since Saxon times as the area is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Over the next couple of years, we have a project in place to restore and reorder our current building and the landscape; to enable it to meet the needs of our congregation, church visitors and the surrounding community, young and old, so that ministry and mission can continue now and in the future. St Richard’s, known as ‘the Church on the Racecourse Estate’ was built when the Racecourse Estate was developed between 1951-1955, consisting of a hall and a chapel. The Racecourse Estate is so named because it was at one point a national centre and headquarters for pony racing, with a new racecourse built there in 1929.
Eco Church and St Mary’s Churchyard: St Mary’s with St Richard’s has received a bronze eco church award and is working towards a silver award. We are very fortunate to have a large churchyard around our beautiful church of St. Mary’s. Burials have been taking place there since the 1500’s. The churchyard contains nearly 700 plots which is divided into 6 sections. The oldest gravestone that can be found in the churchyard is dated 1664. There are also several other gravestones from between 1750 and 1796. There are so many interesting graves and a lot of history in our churchyard, including 15 war graves from World War II – the youngest fallen soldier was only 19 years old and the oldest fallen soldier was 42. We are also pleased to record and see a huge variety of wildlife in the churchyard, details of which can be found at our website.