This week our petition to save the Vaults passed 15,000 supporters and we thank all of you who have joined our campaign.

The dispute between cafe founder Will Pouget and the vicar, the Revd Will Lamb, has now been passed to the High Court to decide and we are informed that the next hearing will be in London on December, 17th.

Meanwhile, the vicar has remained silent and appointed leading public relations advisors, Paternoster Communications, to represent him. They say that the legal action is now being directed by the two churchwardens, Karen Melham and Nicholas Hardyman.

Melham is a senior manager in the university vaccines group and Hardyman is a businessman who publishes a community newsletter in Oxford’s Summertown. So today we write an open letter to the churchwardens….

Dear Karen Melham and Nicholas Hardyman,

As you must be aware, our petition has shown the level of local support for the cafe as an Oxford institution with more than 1,000 comments, many of which are highly critical of your action.

We urge you to consider our petition as the representatives of the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Revd Steven Croft, and to seek a settlement of this dispute which is proving so damaging to the reputation of the Church.

A county court judge has stated that the cafe is a “much loved” and “much frequented” institution in Oxford and many of our supporters have commented on your conduct in the light of Christian values.

Already we are informed that the legal costs for both parties are in excess of £100,000 and are likely to exceed £250,000 before the issues in dispute are finally decided by the courts. 

We are also informed that you have returned more than £150,000 in rent to the cafe which are surely monies that could be better spent on charitable purposes by the Church.

We link you below to  the latest report in the Oxford Mail  about your action which is headlined “Visitors horrified by closure.” Surely this gives grounds for you to reconsider your decision to evict the cafe.

https://www.change.org/p/save-the-vaults-garden-cafe/u/33018804

We do hope that you will consider the views of our supporters and try to resolve this dispute to the benefit of all.

Yours sincerely,

The Save the Vaults Team

Once again, we thank all of you who have supported our petition and especially to the many of you who have made a financial contribution to our campaign. Please forward this update to your friends and colleagues by email and on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter(X) and encourage them to sign too.

team@savethevaults.com