The central role of the Church of England is mission and ministry and the strategy of the Church’s Cathedrals and Church Buildings Division is to support buildings for mission. Over three quarters of the Church of England’s 15,700 church buildings are listed, although the Church is not a heritage organisation. Discussions on conservation of church heritage focus on the buildings: conservation of historic interiors is rarely explicitly mentioned, which is not surprising given the uneasy relationship the Church of England has with religious imagery. The implicit nature of discussions makes it difficult to unpick the impact of conservation of historic church interiors as part of the whole, which in turn has implications on the allocation of resources to their conservation. This paper discusses the current research project that is exploring conservation for mission of the Church’s historic interiors. It interrogates the real questions asked by parishioners: ‘How does the conservation of a monument help the mission of a church?’, ‘How does maintenance of a mechanical church turret clock aid mission?’ Development of this discourse centred around objects in situ will help to strengthen the relationship between objects and buildings conservation.

英格兰教会的中心角色是宣教和事工，教会的大教堂和教堂建筑部的战略是支持宣教建筑。英格兰教会的15700座教堂中有超过四分之三被列出，尽管该教堂不是一个遗产组织。关于教堂遗产保护的讨论集中在建筑物上：很少明确提及对历史性室内装饰的保护，鉴于英格兰教堂与宗教意象之间的不安关系，这不足为奇。讨论的隐含性质使得很难消除保护历史教堂内部整体的影响，而这反过来又影响了对其保护资源的分配。本文讨论了当前的研究项目，该项目正在探索保护教堂历史悠久的内部空间。它质疑教区居民提出的真实问题：“保护纪念碑如何帮助教堂执行任务？”，“维护机械转塔钟楼如何帮助执行任务？” 这种话语的发展围绕对象原位将有助于加强物体与建筑物保护之间的关系。