The Boniface Centre is eminently practical and flexible, housing three sizeable function rooms which can be used independently or they can readily be converted into a single large hall. It also houses the Parish Office.

The Centre is a multi-purpose building, and can accommodate functions for anything between 10 and 200 people. Many county-wide organisations (including committees of both County and District Councils) use it for meetings, seminars, conferences, training days and fund raising purposes.

The Boniface Centre is a modern steel/glass construction completed in the early 1990s. Doubling up as the hall belonging to Crediton Parish Church and a community centre it is run by a volunteer group and has no resident staff.

It is offered as a multi-purpose hall, all on one level, and comprises a main hall approximately 23m x 7.6m – 8.2m situated on one side of a concourse with service facilities on the other side of the concourse (office, kitchen, servery/bar and toilets). The main hall can be divided into 3 rooms separated by movable acoustic walls. The two larger rooms have wood-block flooring whilst the smallest room is fully carpeted. A floorplan is available to view and/or print out here. There is flexibility to offer space from small committee meetings to conferences up to 150 people, fund-raising events, children’s parties etc. The Centre has a premises licence allowing music and sale of alcohol (however we do not allow discos).

The three function rooms have been christened Sarasota (suitable for approximately 80 people), Dokkum (approx. 20 people) and Fulda (approx. 30 people) – the last after the city in Germany where Boniface is buried.

• Room capacities are approximate only and are very much dependent upon the nature of the event to be held in the room.

The Centre is also used for church services, wedding receptions, parties and other diverse activities to raise funds for the church – such as coffee mornings, jumble sales, bingo, book sales and quizzes and social gatherings of many other different kinds.

This is a very disabled-friendly building. There are no ramps, and it is equipped with a toilet for the disabled, a hearing loop system and a sophisticated, but easy-to-use, public address system.

The kitchen is very large and well equipped, the Centre has 26 trestle tables (with others of different shapes) for sit-down meals or to spread out paperwork, seating for up to 200, staging and many other facilities.

St Boniface

The Church of the Holy Cross and indeed the name of Crediton are both inextricably linked with St Boniface.

Boniface was born in Crediton in 680AD into a Saxon family. He was baptised Wynfrith or Winfrid (from the Saxon words wine – friend and frith – peace).

For many years he had felt called to missionary work and started this, at the age of thirty-six in Friesland – now part of Northern Holland, in 716. His first mission was unsuccessful, and he returned to Wessex where he was offered the job of Abbot of Nursling. He declined this, and went to Rome where, in May 719, Pope Gregory II commissioned him as a missionary to Germany. He was given the name Boniface, meaning maker of good or good deeds.

In 732 Boniface was consecrated archbishop – without a specific archiepiscopal see – by Pope Gregory III.

Boniface has been described by eminent historians as “The greatest Englishman of all time” and “the Englishman who has had a greater influence on the history of Europe than any other Englishman”, but in England he is not greatly known about.