Mike Chapple Reports On The Passing Of A Piece Of Church History, Daily Post
THE final chapter in the history of the Liverpool Archdiocese's oldest parish will end today. Father Time has finally caught up with St Swithin's, in Gillmoss, where Mass will be held for the final time tonight.
The first record of a Mass being celebrated on the site goes back as far as 1425 and four Catholic churches have existed there through the centuries.
The current church on Gillmoss Lane, which was built in 1958, has become too big for the dwindling number of its mostly elderly parishioners. Plus, despite its relatively new construction, there is concern about its increasingly poor state of repair.
The current priest Father Philip Inch is resigned to the fact that demographics and finance has sealed the fate of the church on a site rich in historical significance.
Priests in hiding used to celebrate Mass in cottages that existed there during the Reformation and the Comte d'Artois, who became King Charles X of France in 1824, was a regular visitor and had a reserved stall there.
In more recent times it was used to celebrate Mass for the hospital pilgrims travelling to Lourdes.
"It seemed silly to go to a great deal of expense in repairs for a church that had become too big for its needs," says Father Inch,, who claims that St Swithin's became increasingly isolated after a newer church Our Lady Queen of Martyrs was opened in nearby Stonebridge Lane in 1968.
St Swithin's parishioners will still be able to celebrate Mass on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the adjacent convent chapel. This is thanks to the cooperation of the Redemptoristine Sisters, an enclosed order of nuns who have been based there for 11 years. So the parish of St Swithin's will essentially remain, with Queen of Martyrs, where Father Inch currently presides, as another option for worshippers.
Father Inch emphasises, however, that this will not alleviate the initial feeling of upset that the closure will bring.
"Of course there will be a great deal of sadness attached to the occasion.
"When you close a church you are not just closing a building but bringing to an end something which holds a lot of precious memories for people, so there is a lot of hurt there."
"A new future dawns for St Swithin's but at the moment it is very hard to see that because of the sadness at the loss of the present church which is loved and cared for by so many people."
The church will now be demolished and the land sold to create a fund to pay off remaining debts and create an endowment for the management of the site that is being retained. The land, however, is subject to an age-old covenant given on the understanding that it should used for worship.
This means that some of the money raised will have to be used to buy off the covenant.
However, there should still be enough to landscape the cemetery and create a monument to the original church.
An attempt will also be made to win grant aid to reopen the crypt, sealed up when the last church was built 46 years ago. It is believed to contain among the tombs, the stone slab on which St Richard Herst, a Preston farmer who became a Catholic martyr, was hanged at Lancaster in 1628. He was beatified in 1929.
Father Inch says that some of the oldest parishioners remember seeing the slab when the crypt was open.
Those same witnesses will no doubt be there at 7.30pm tonight when the Right Rev Thomas Williams, the new Auxiliary Bishop of Liverpool, is the head celebrant at the final Mass.
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