In October 2025, KDK Archaeology Ltd prepared a Heritage Asset Assessment of St Charalambos Greek Orthodox Church in East Hyde, Bedfordshire. The church dates from the 1840s when it was built as a chapel of ease dedicated to the Holy Trinity. It became a licensed church when the parish was established in 1859 but held its final Anglican service in 2008. This Heritage Asset Assessment has been prepared in order to comply with Paragraphs 207 and 208 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) (MHCLG 2025), whereby the significance and setting of the heritage asset(s) and the potential impacts of the proposed development are set out in order to inform the Planning Application. This requires the collation of existing information in order to identify the likely extent, character and quality of the known or potential heritage assets and/or archaeological resources, in order that appropriate measures for mitigating the impact of development might be considered (CIfA 2020). St Charalambos Church, which was originally constructed as a chapel of ease dedicated to the Holy Trinity c.1842, now serves as a Greek Orthodox place of worship and has a large congregation that comes from a relatively wide geographical area. In addition to religious services, the church provides pastoral care and a centre for community gatherings on a regular basis. The church is located in the centre of East Hyde, a small settlement that appears to have been established in the late Saxon or early post-conquest period. Crop marks and flint scatters to the northwest of the church suggest low level human activity in the vicinity since the late Neolithic/early bronze Age and there is archaeological evidence for settlement to the southwest of the present village on the opposite side of the River Lea. The present settlement lines the Lower Harpenden Road with a cluster of modern housing on an earlier field and the former vicarage site to the east of the church. There are few statutorily and locally listed buildings other than the church and the Wernher mausoleum to the north of it. Both are Grade II listed. The former Leather Bottle P.H. and village school, which are both non-designated heritage assets, lie to the southwest and west of the church respectively. There is no intervisibility between these buildings and the proposed development site, which lies to the north of the church. Intervisibility between the church and the proposed vicarage site is limited by the tall yew trees in the churchyard and the Wernher mausoleum is visually isolated from its surroundings by a tall yew hedge. The archaeological record indicates low level activity in the wider study area and the documentary and cartographic evidence indicates the proposed development site was not used for burials. Indeed, the only known potential heritage asset on the site is a small, 4m2 structure that is depicted on maps from c.1924 but had been demolished by 1972. Any structural remains may have been impacted by groundworks associated with the construction of the car park as well as earlier levelling of the site. All things considered, the potential impact on subsurface remains of any period is low. The potential visual impact on the setting of the church and the Wernher mausoleum is minimal. The proposed vicarage is single storey, of modest size and would be largely obscured from the former by trees and completely obscured from the latter by a tall hedge. The re-introduction of a vicarage to the church would be highly satisfactory in historical terms, given the traditional proximity of the two. The benefit to the community would, as a result, be high in that the church could be even more accessible on a regular basis for private and communal worship. The presence of an inhabited building at the end of Hambros Close may also prove to be a deterrent for the anti-social activities that have been known to take place in this otherwise secluded spot.
Kaye et al. (Wed,) studied this question.