A SENIOR Anglican clergyman is advocating market stalls, bingo games and discos in church buildings to help to save them from closure.

The Archdeacon of Gloucester, the Ven Geoffrey Sidaway,has said that smaller churches around the country will have to be closed to help to meet the cost of maintaining larger ones. He is seeking to restore the practice of the medieval era, when church naves were used for markets and meetings by villagers, with the chancel and sanctuary kept sacred for worship.

He said: “We cannot go on using buildings for just 1½ hours on Sundays. Much more should be done to extend their use, taking out pews, putting in loos and kitchen facilities.”

He said he was not calling for churches to be turned into disco halls or bingo clubs, “but if an elderly people’s lunch club finishes off with a hand of bingo, that’s OK. If the youth event finishes off with a disco, I think that’s OK. Extending their use is a way of breathing life into our church buildings.”

The Archdeacon of Surrey, the Ven Robert Reiss, a trustee of the Churches Conservation Trust, has surveyed archdeacons in all 42 dioceses in England, asking them to estimate how many churches would have to be shut down over the next ten years. Archdeacons in 28 of the dioceses responded with an estimate of 200 in total, which could mean that as many as 300 could go in a decade.

Canon Sidaway said that many smaller churches had become a burden that the Church of England could no longer bear. In the Gloucester Diocese, which is facing the same financial difficulties as the Church nationally, there is not enough money to maintain all 400 churches properly, so inevitably some will have to close to save others.

“Realistically we cannot maintain all these buildings, and if we do not go down this kind of route then within ten years we could see wholesale closure of a number of church buildings,” he said.

“Even then we need to be thinking about which buildings are strategic and which ones we might let go. It will be tough, but in many instances the decision will make itself. I am the last person who wants to close churches. They provide a wonderful venue for weddings, christenings and funerals, but their upkeep has become a crushing burden.”

He said that many of the churches across Gloucestershire were comparable to cathedrals but had a handful of regular worshippers.

“To be at the heart of the community, a church building needs to be used by the whole community. In the past, church buildings were used for markets and fairs. It seems to me we now have to get back to a similar situation.

“If people see a church as warm and welcoming they might well feel it’s a good place to go on a Sunday morning as well. Churches that are used in this way say that they have seen a rise in their congregations. Expanding their use will help to breathe new life into the buildings.”

Clergy around the country backed Canon Sidaway.

The Rev John Willard, vicar of Fairford, near Cirencester, said: “The Church is not just about buildings, it is about people. Some of these ancient buildings need a lot of looking after and quite often the congregations are not able to sustain that cost on their own.”

The Rev Peter Chicken, vicar of St Philip and St James, Cheltenham, agreed: “We can’t afford to keep open all 26 Anglican churches in our town. Towns will not be affected by closures so much as rural areas, however.”

Simon Jenkins, the author of England’s Thousand Best Churches, cited All Saints in Hereford as an example of how a church can be opened up. It was restored after years of decay and now has a coffee bar and restaurant in the west end and a banqueting table in the south chapel.

A Church of England spokesman said: “Clearly there are some things you could not do in a parish church. What it was used for would be down to what the parochial church council found appropriate.”

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