These photos were gathered starting immediately after the fire so they could be available to the fire investigators and during the rebuild. Now they act as a wonderful historical record of St Peter’s before, during and after the 2014 fire.
Old photos of St Peter’s are still welcome and will be added to the appropriate galley if suitable. If you have any images of the church, especially of the interior (and particularly the interior of the Bell Tower), then please send them to stpetersropley@gmail.com — images of the fire itself will also be very useful. If there are too many to attach then just send a link if possible. Flash drives or CD/DVDs are also welcome — get in touch via email please.
Groups of Image Galleries
Notes on the Aerial Drone Gallery (Above)
These images were taken by David Quick of Alton Camera Club using a “Hexacopter” drone on the 29 July 2014. The original resolution is much higher than available on this site – images here are downsized to a 1024 pixel maximum for performance reasons. For the originals, see David’s gallery on flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidquick/sets/72157646012011852 from where they can be downloaded.
Alton Camera Club has started maintaining a bank of ‘then and now’ photos of Alton and surrounding villages with the assistance of the Curtis Museum.
Aerial Images from Kevin Milner of Alresford
Photographer Kevin Milner used a remote controlled drone to take these images from 250ft above St Peter’s Church in Ropley. Kevin, from Alresford, has been a professional countryside and equine photographer for seven years, and his work can be seen on greetings cards across the country. He said: “I have taken it to give to the church. I supply them with church cards and it’s nice to give something back to the community. Once it has been rebuilt they can put it up.”
The images are excellent and give a current and sobering indication of what little is left of the church. Note that the images are copyright of St Peter’s PCC and Kevin Milner — they should not be re-used or re-posted, particularly by news media, without permission (stpetersropley@gmail.com). The images on this page are much reduced from their original resolution – clicking on the actual images here will display an improved quality image.
The first image shows the situation of St Peter’s Church Ropley — at the very heart of our community:
The second image shows a closer view of the destruction — almost nothing is left of the interior:
