Thornsett Group

I’m building a heavenly roost

Jane Slade meets a dynamic priest who is using the skills from his previous life to build a new home for himself and an exciting centre for his congregation

The Reverend Jonathan Rust is not your average vicar. In fact, he has only been wearing a dog collar for just over 10 years. Prior to that he was scaling the heady heights as a chartered surveyor, taking home a nice salary as head of land management with international building supplier Redland.
He bought a bachelor pad in north London’s fashionable Barnsbury, just round the corner from the Blairs’ old house, went on two skiing holidays a year, drove a company car and enjoyed an expense account. However, in his spare time, he would help out in a drop-in centre for the homeless and play football with his church’s youth group.
The two strands of his life were going along nicely. Then, as he was about to knock on the door to Redland’s main boardroom, he was diverted from his straight and narrow path of career ambition and financial success and decided to become a priest. His conversion wasn’t so much while he was on the road to Damascus but more “on the road to lower Holloway”.
He abandoned his worldly goods, rented out his flat, took a 90 per cent drop in salary and enrolled on a two-year theology degree.
He now lives in a tiny house round the corner from St David’s Church in Islington with his Check-born wife Renata and their eight-year old daughter Babette.
Yet Jonathan’s real epiphany occurred when the Church of England decided to close St David’s on 2009 where he officiated, and to transform the space into a £3.4million centre to include community buildings, residential flats and a restored church.
When it came to finding a project manager and designer as well as ”Christian soldier” to go into battle with the council the Reverend “Chartered Surveyor” Jonathan Rust ticked all the boxes.
“I suppose you could call it a baptism of fire,” he jokes. “It took six years to get permission as Islington Council didn’t believe my scheme was altruistic.
“It was a simple idea. We wanted to raise £3million from the sale of the 42 apartments to reinvest in the church and we (the Church) agreed to add another £1million on top of for the community centre but they just didn’t believe us.
“I always wanted to work in an inner city church and London is hard to get into as everyone wants to be in the thick of the action in a gritty scene. I just didn’t realise how gritty it would get.”
The scheme, which wills service the community of north London’s Lower Holloway, an area that suffers from deprivation and poverty, has just won approval and work is now underway with the completion date for the reopening of the church set for spring 2013.
More than £3million has already been raised through the sale of the flats, some of which are for social housing. One-beds were priced at £270,000 rising to £500,000 for two-bed penthouses, all of which were much too expensive for Jonathan who paid £120,000 for his two-bed flat in 1995. Instead, his prize will be designing his vicarage on site; an upside-down house for himself and his family, which will be finished next January.
“It will extend over three floors with bedrooms on the lower ground floor,” he says. “There will be four bedrooms, a study and guest cloakroom. On the first floor there will be an open-plan living space for a kitchen, dining room and living room.”
He may build a music room on the top floor; apart from Jonathan’s skills on the saxophone, Renata is an accomplished pianist and Babette plays the violin.
“I never imagined I would use my skills as a chartered surveyor again, or that they would come in so useful,” says Jonathan as he talks about the plans for the new St David’s. “I want this church to be groundbreaking in that it will have a very open feel,” he says, “more Grand Designs than traditional Victorian and be multifaceted, informal and welcoming. I want the space to be used as creatively as we can rather that just having Brownies on a Tuesday evening.”
Jonathan, 48, already hosts a jazz service at a neighbouring church so the community can expect some upbeat features at the new one.
“We will have a café and reception area,” he says. “I also want to open the up the church using glass and stone and build a glass bridge to link the second floor section. It will have a lift, and a minstrel gallery overlooking the worshipping place so it looks like people are playing from the heavens. I want to invite people to come and give lectures and host conferences. I want mother and toddler groups here and keep-fit groups and I want modern technology so I can incorporate video clips into my sermons.
“The project has been very much my baby and it is nice that the first 14 years of my working life have not gone to waste.”
Jonathan, a Londoner, studied land management at Reading University in the early Eighties before embarking on a property career with McAlpine specialising, naturally, in conversions.
Inevitably, word has got around about Jonathan’s skill in working miracles with the council and creating a dynamic scheme for his redundant church so he anticipates dividing his time as the roving reverend who restores buildings as well as lives.
“There are several churches in Islington which are looking to do the same so I could be busy in the future,” he says.
What about his previous life though? Does he miss the expense account and fine dining? “Fortunately I have kept in touch with a few of my chums who can take me out for a nice lunch in the West End now and again,” he chuckles.