A Keswick church which has stood empty since its final service at the start of the first coronavirus lockdown is to close permanently and be sold.
The number of worshippers passing through the green door of the Gospel Hall, in St John’s Street, on a Sunday had dwindled to just five and all of them were elderly.
“It’s a sign of the times,” said George Bright, who is a trustee of the church and has been a regular worshipper there with his wife, Ros, since they moved to the town 1985.
“There are oases around the country where people are being encouraged to go to church and they are doing so.
“Sadly, we have lost all our young ones. A lot of them have moved away from Keswick and many have not taken up their faith.
“Our congregation has gone down and down and down and it left us with a maximum of five people there who regularly worshipped.
“One is 86, another is 84, me and my wife are 78 and another is 76. It is all very sad.”
Mr Bright said that the congregation would be swelled when the Keswick Convention was held and he can remember one occasion in the 1980s when the church had more than 50 people in it.
He said that in its heyday the church had around 35 people meeting there regularly.
The church does not have a resident pastor and Mr Bright said that “whoever was led by the spirit” would preach or pray and that was how services were run.
The two-storey building has a meeting hall upstairs, where two rooms have been knocked through, and there are toilets both upstairs and down.
Mr Bright said that PFK had valued the building at £100,000.
“We had to decide to sell it because it was a drain on the resources of the worshippers,” said Mr Bright.
He and his wife are currently weighing up where they intend to continue worshipping.
