Conger

The Church in Wales Governing Body has shelved plans to shutter St. Michael’s College, Llandaff, voting instead on Sept 19 to invest £650,000 over the next five years to upgrade the clergy training college’s student accommodations, dining hall and meeting rooms.

In 2004, the Church in Wales put the 2.8 acre site located in a Cardiff suburb up for sale, due to rising maintenance costs of the college building, constructed in the 1880’s. However, the school’s trustees soon took the buildings off the market and last month the Governing Body voted to expend the funds to maintain the property as well as build a business conference center on site.

The college Principal, Canon Peter Sedgwick thanked the Governing Body for its decision telling the church’s synod the school had an “excellent staff team that will in a few years make this place both a national leader in chaplaincy studies and create a first class conference centre. We already train clergy and readers to a very high standard for the Methodist Church and the Church in Wales. Now we can build on our success and make St Michael’s College a place that Wales can be really proud of. The future is very bright, and I am full of confidence.”

Founded in 1892, St. Michael’s is the Church in Wales sole residential clergy training college. The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, said the college faces “a challenging but an exciting future.”

“As a college it has achieved consistently high standards in terms of academic provision and ministry formation. It is vital to the Church’s future mission in Wales, and indeed to the future of the Church itself, that additional investment is made in providing training for ministry in its widest sense,” Dr. Morgan said.