Fight to reopen church as a hall
Tuesday 2nd January 2007, 7:08PM GMT.
Campaigners fighting for control of their village church near Shrewsbury want to reopen it as a community hall.
The public have been locked out of St Anne’s Church at Lea Cross since early 2005 after a ruling by an ecclesiastical court.
Angry villagers protested at the closure and claimed they, not the diocese, should be in charge of the building as it was left to the community by Mary Hawkes, whose brother-in-law built St Anne’s as a memorial to his mother.
Brian Goodwin, one of the campaigners battling for St Anne’s to be given back to village residents, said a proposal would be submitted to the Charity Commission to transform the church into a community hall.
He said this would fulfil the criteria of Mary Hawkes’ will which stated the building was to be used as a memorial hall.
Mr Goodwin said the condition that a service be held at the building each year on All Saints Day could also be fulfiled.
It follows a separate proposal by the Charity Commission to bring together four charities – St Anne’s Church, the Mary Hawkes Endowment Fund, Mary Hawkes’ Lea Cross Charity and the Parsonage House Trust to oversee the building’s future.
The dispute took a new twist in December when it emerged that diocesan officials could have the power to sell off the church’s altar cloth, vestments and furnishings – and perhaps even the land which the church stands on.
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