Church 'bucking the trend' as it reopens after over a decade
Video report by Rob Shelley
A North Wales church which has been without services for over a decade has been reopened by the Archbishop of Wales.
Many chapels and churches have closed across the country due to high costs butSt Mary’s Church in Morfa Nefyn is bucking the trend.
Rev Kevin Ellis said 'there's been a real teamwork between the community and the church'
No-one is quite sure exactly but somewhere between 2,000 - 3,500 churches across Britain have locked their doors and left only a congregation of spiders inside. St Mary's was on that list...until now.
Annie Sanson's one of a handful of people, the Friends of St Mary's, who were desperately upset when dwindling numbers meant the Church in Wales had to announce its closure
It is the church that opened twice. Once, in 1870 - and now, once again, in June 2024.
Even through its closure they held Christmas and Easter and Epiphanies there: the hymns were never entirely unsung.
And so, as a decade - and slightly more - passed - the argument to reopen it grew.
Vicar, the Rev Kevin Ellis, who has nine churches to balance in his very large parish of Bro Madryn, said: "It's the Friends' [of St Mary's] enthusiasm, and 'the willingness to have a go' that made the argument.
"Then it's down to the Bishop to say yes. On Sunday, June the 9th, St Mary's had its grand reopening, complete with the Archbishop of Wales - who also happens to be the Bishop of Bangor."
The first people to open St Mary's wore hats and had that Victorian certainty that their church, the physical building, would always be there.
Their 2024 counterparts have mobile phones and posted the reopening pictures on Facebook.
But the faith and the sentiment haven't changed, no matter how much we have.
Annie 'fesses up that her eyes weren't exactly dry that day: "this is now open and it's - oh, it's fantastic."
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