York church holds final service after 160 years on site

Melbourne Terrace Methodist Church in Cemetery Road was packed for the special service on Sunday afternoon.

The event was deliberately timed to mark the 30th anniversary of its opening in a brand new building on the site of a much larger landmark church building, which was built in 1877 and itself replaced smaller buildings used for worship there for about 20 years.

The previous church, pictured in 1984

One of those attending the closing service, Stephen Leah, said it was very well attended.

“Despite the sadness of the occasion, it was indeed a celebration of more than 160 years of worship and witness on this site, and under the Methodist banner,” he said. “The preacher, our former minister, the Reverend Keith Himsworth, led the service brilliantly.”

The Reverend Ian Hill, who had pastoral charge of the church, has said previously that it had to close because members had become too few in number to continue running it.

The congregation had shrunk in recent times to about 20 members and, although sad to make the decision, they had decided to ‘go out on a high’ by closing at the time of the anniversary with the special service.

He said members would now disperse to alternative churches of their own choosing.

He said yesterday that the hall behind the church, leased to the council and known as the Melbourne Centre, which provides specialist training and learning opportunities in the daytime and room space for community, sports and leisure groups in the evening and weekends, would continue in such uses.

The church building itself was set to be bought by one of the new churches, and so Christian worship would continue there.

He added that unlike many other older Methodist churches which had closed down, it was in a good structural condition.