Cambridge college plans to install climbing wall in 150-year-old church tower

Pembroke College submits planning application for 10-metre high climbing walls and ropes to transform a Grade II-listed church

A Cambridge University college has submitted plans to build a climbing wall inside a Grade II-listed church tower.
Pembroke College has applied to install 10-metre-high climbing walls and ropes inside the 150-year-old tower of Emmanuel United Reformed Church.
The college submitted a planning application to Cambridge City Council to transform the currently disused tower into what it says will be the “first rope climbing facility” in the city centre.
It has said “six to seven” people will be able to use the structure at one time and only by those “adequately trained”. 
It is not clear if it will be open to the general public or to Cambridge students who attend other colleges.
The church was sold to the college in 2020 after its congregation merged with the nearby St Columba’s United Reformed Church to form Downing Place United Reformed Church.
Its nave and apse have since been converted into a 200-seat auditorium for lectures, events and performances, with its original pulpit, arches and wooden roof trusses all preserved.
A document prepared by the college and Haworth Tompkins, the architecture firm, describes the climbing wall as a “unique” opportunity to “repurpose the 1874 James Cubitt tower”. Mr Cubitt was a noted Victorian architect of non-conformist chapels.
It reads: “The existing tower provides a rare opportunity within the city centre to utilise an existing tall space, enabling us to provide a 10-metre high climb, which is deemed by professional climbers to be a medium to difficult climb.
“Students and Fellows will be awarded the rare views from the top of the tower staircase across Cambridge, and the opportunity to experience the lofty height of the existing tower.
“Structural and architectural interventions will be respectful of the existing fabric and the proportions of the tower geometry.”
The church has already been refurbished with an extendable stage, underfloor heating and new double-glazed windows since the college bought it.
Pembroke is not one of the richer Cambridge colleges, but still has sizeable reserves of £302 million, according to its 2022-23 accounts.
Six rare stained glass windows created in 1905 by William Morris’s company Morris and Co have also been maintained. They depict six notable Puritans with links to Cambridge: Henry Barrow, John Greenwood, Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, Francis Holcroft and Joseph Hussey.
There have been no public comments in support or against the plans to date.
If approved, the church would not be the first in Britain to have a climbing wall installed.
The Church of St Marks in Newcastle, the Grange Free Church in Kilmarnock and St Benedict’s in West Gorton, Manchester, have all been converted into climbing centres.
Other churches have been converted into nightclubs, including the Grade II-listed St Andrew’s in Bournemouth, which is now Halo, and Salisbury’s Chapel nightclub, which was built in the 19th century as a Pentecostal church.
The chapel of the former Claybury Asylum in Woodford, north London, is now a swimming pool and sauna, while Nottingham’s Grade II-listed High Pavement Chapel was converted into a bar in 1998.