St Thomas’ Church, Parkgate, open days

St Thomas’ Church will be open to visitors on Sundays August 3,10,17 and 24 from 2 – 4 pm.

A spokesperson said: “St Thomas’ Church is unusual, having been a place of worship for three denominations, and as a building that looks the non-conformist chapel that it once was. St Thomas’ began life on May 10, 1843, as a Congregational Chapel, in a period when Parkgate was described as ‘a popular holiday resort with clean, sandy beaches’. In 1857 it became a Presbyterian Chapel. Attendances were ‘so successful’ that they moved, in 1884, to a larger, purpose-built church, now the United Reformed Church.
The chapel was only used for informal services, and was renamed ‘Parkgate Hall’.
The Church of England leased the chapel in 1910 and bought it for £300 in 1917 when it was renamed after St Thomas the Apostle. Thereafter it has remained one of three churches in the Parish, and functions still, with services at 9.30 am on nearly all Sundays, and popular events at Christmas and Harvest (which traditionally celebrates the harvest of the sea) and for schools, as well as community organisations. The interior as you see it now, is the result of a major community-funded restoration, reopening in 2010, 100 years after it was first used as an Anglican church.”