THE redevelopment of a 12th century church into a college archive has won a second architectural award.

St Cross Church, in St Cross Street, Oxford, was converted into an archive for Balliol College in a £2.5m scheme, after the church was made redundant in 2008.

Finished in January 2011 after years of planning, the project won an Oxford Preservation Trust Award earlier this month, followed a week later by a Royal Institute of British Architects South/South East conservation award.

Readers at Balliol College have now started to use the Grade I listed building which includes material from famous former students Robert Browning and Matthew Arnold.

Robert Montgomery, managing director of city-based Montgomery Architects who led the project, said: “It’s a complete refurbishment of the inside of the old church to form the archives for Balliol College and then a complete conservation and restoration of the external fabric of the building.

“It was a fascinating project to work on.”

Each of the stained glass windows was removed, cleaned and replaced.

All the pews in the nave were taken up and archive units carefully selected and installed to allow for preservation of more than 100 burials under the floor.

And flakes of paint were painstakingly restored to a dramatic ceiling painting in the nave, returning the painting to its former glory.

Mr Montgomery said: “We designed the archive units so they don’t go into the depth of the floor below to minimise the disturbance to the archaeology and burials underneath.

“The units were installed completely separate from the walls of the church itself so you can walk all the way round the archives without disturbing the monuments.”

He said the team who worked on the project were “absolutely thrilled” by the award: “It’s recognition of a very successful job and a great accolade for the whole team.”

The work finished at the beginning of the year, but transferring the material to its new home from the college’s library took months and the first readers began to use the archive last month.

Balliol College Emeritus Fellow and archivist Dr John Jones said: “The college’s purpose was twofold, to provide appropriate environmentally controlled conditions for its archive and manuscripts and make them more available, and to release space in the main library on the Broad Street site.

“We are very pleased that in meeting these aims, it has also been possible to preserve the church building, parts of which are 900 years old.”

“We think Robert Montgomery has done an absolutely brilliant job which solves our long-term problem of giving proper housing to our archives and manuscripts.”

The archive will mostly be used by visiting academics and researchers, and includes material dating back to 1263, when the college was founded.