Sensitive Audio Upgrade for Grade I Listed Church
Posted on: 2nd June 2025
All Hallows in Allerton, south Liverpool, is a Gothic Revival church of exquisite stained-glass windows, marble angels, and flagged floors. Crowned by a soaring ceiling, up to 20 metres high, the building tracks the arc of time all the way back to 1876. The challenge is to stay true to such an historic setting while installing a modern-day PA system to serve baptisms, weddings and funerals as well as regular services of worship. How can the new join hands with the old?
‘I’m sitting here now in this very old church in the midst of upgrading all the audio,’ says Dan Orange from Liverpool-based Electric Orange. ‘The job is taking about four days. It’s a stone building, no floorboards, so I’m having to navigate tight spaces and crawl under very old pews to fit cables.’
The bulk of Dan’s work is in residential dwellings, providing home cinemas and video. Over recent years, however, he has also installed and refreshed audio-visual solutions in churches across the north west. He explains that he originally put the equipment in All Hallows 14 years ago with the permission of The Church of England, the Victorian Society and English Heritage (It took a year to get approval). Now, it’s time to take advantage of advancements in the industry, still in keeping with the regulations tied to a building of special historic and architectural interest.
‘The church had an old Allen & Heath analogue desk, some amplifiers that had recently packed up and some old on-wall speakers. The existing speakers did the job but the new speakers we’ve installed will improve the speech and music quality for their congregations.’
Armed with a budget of around £20,000, Dan ordered an SQ6 Digital Mixer from Leisuretec and the AB168 AudioRack to go with it, plus Sennheiser wireless mic systems for clear wireless audio, Crown power amps and a Cloud Amplifier for the simplicity and reliability.
'I tend to use Leisuretec for my commercial PA. It’s easy to order multiple brands from a single source with next-day delivery. I also speak to Craig (Technical Sales) occasionally for technical support. I know that someone will actually pick up the phone when I want to ask questions.'
‘A big consideration was that the people using the system are not necessarily tech-savvy. With the SQ desk they can just jump on with a microphone and a CD player. On a Sunday the church has a worship team, instruments and three or four vocals so it needs something to be able to cope with that, too. This desk works very well on both counts. I also ordered some JBL CBT speakers from Leisuretec to direct the sound around the space. They have a good balance of music reproduction and speech intelligibility, while fitting in with the church’s aesthetic.’
Dan adds: ‘Our church work has a lot of cross over with my residential work where I fit control systems and video matrixes. In a listed building, the trick is to be discreet and ensure that very little is on show. Working with all this history and drawing the best out of the acoustics is very satisfying.’
