Case Study - Green Sproughton – Old building new life

A Suffolk village used funds from the Cut your Carbon competition to breathe new life into its tithe barn, making it the flagship of their award winning carbon reduction project.

Green Sproughton refurbished an historic tithe barn by adding insulation, installing new doors, with glazed doors behind, to admit natural light and solar gain and powering it with renewable energy with funds from the Cut your Carbon competition.

The barn will act as a carbon reduction centre and environmental resource centre marketed as a ‘green’ venue for green communities to hold training days and information exchange conferences.  

Peter Lee, spokesperson for Green Sproughton said: “The tithe barn is symbolic of our rural heritage and identity as a village. It belongs to the whole village and is used by the whole village during the warmer months. It is emblematic of our community spirit. Maintaining and insuring the barn is currently very expensive. Until recently, revenue from the Barn had not been matching expenditure. The challenge we faced was to make a porous 17th Century listed building useable by people with 21st Century expectations.”  

This active community is the result of a workshop held on carbon-cutting in March 2007. The individuals that attended were so inspired, that they decided to take action as a community. Green Sproughton was formed in April that year as a panel of the Parish Council and has been working towards making Sproughton a greener place to live ever since.  

Green Sproughton has already engaged the whole village with a series of events in the barn, including a Green Fun Day, a Spring Greens event, a showing of the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth and running a logo design competition. The Parish Council will use the barn to encourage the occupants of Sproughton to deliver further targeted CO2 emission reductions by holding carbon pledge days, green technology exhibitions, personal testimony talks and focus on available grant schemes.

 “Community action can make a difference”, Peter continued “We are already helping households save money as well as CO2.  We are delighted that EEDA’s Cut your Carbon campaign was able to help us.”

Sproughton Parish Council was the first parish council in England to sign the Nottingham declaration on climate change and also the first parish to sign the ‘Suffolk – creating the greenest county’ statement of intent.