Out of the success of the festival was born a registered charity, the “Friends of St Peter Sudbury”, in readiness for the inevitable declaration of redundancy of the building which came towards the end of 1976 with the Friends being appointed as agents for the Redundant Churches Fund to
run the building locally. Tony Moore was the first chairman, Roger Green became the fourth chairman, enjoying office for 27 years. The Friends had already started opening the building to the public regularly and cleaning, cleaning, and yes, more cleaning.

The Friends’ first major challenge was to take the bells (one is 500 years old) to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry for remedial work, build a new bell frame
in the tower and enable the wonderful voices of those bells to ring out again over the town. The Friends also raised sufficient funds to cast two new bells to make a ring of ten, in October 1979.

The townsfolk soon realised the benefits of using Sudbury’s central building and it became popular for myriad different activities. Many of those who used the building or supported our aims joined the Friends
group. A Rector of the mid 19th century had controversially sold off the pews and so we had a wonderful open space that was adaptable to
so many uses.

Over the next forty years the Friends raised funds to provide new chairs; new staging (twice); new electrics throughout the building; new lighting (twice); new heating (twice); a new kitchen (three times); new tables (twice); and a sound system, as well as spending £350,000 on
the organ and gently renovating parts of the building.