A HYMNATHON has been staged at a York church as part of a £1.2 million fundraising drive to redevelop the church and create a new church hall.

Poppleton Methodist Church has drawn up plans to lower the level of the church floor to make it fully accessible to people using wheelchairs, and replace the pews with chairs that can be moved when necessary.

It also wants to use the existing church hall as a permanent base for its community cafe, which opens two half days a week, and build a new church hall and meeting rooms on land at the back of the church.

Four members of the church - Frances Priestnall, The Reverend Ian Hill, Lyn Johnson and Elizabeth Cracknell – took it in turns to play hymns on the organ or clarinova last Friday afternoon and evening, and again on Saturday.

Frances said they played all 835 hymns from the church’s Hymns and Psalms book, which amounted to a total of about 900 tunes as some hymns had more than one tune.

They played for seven and a half hours on Friday and another five on Saturday. “We only played one verse from each hymn, otherwise we would have had to play for about 30 hours,” said Frances.

She said members of the congregation joined them for an hour on Friday and again on Saturday to join them in singing their favourite hymns, with about 30 singing on Friday and more than 40 on Saturday.

“It went really well and it raised at least £2,500 including Gift Aid,” she said.

Peter Scholtz, who chairs a group involved in applying for grants, said it had raised about £350,000 so far, including £50,000 for the Methodist church’s York circuit and £45,000 from York and Hull circuit, and it had applied for a grant from the church nationally.

“We have recently been advised by the Heritage Lottery Fund that our scheme does not fit in with their criteria,” he said.

“However, they have suggested that we should look at the Big Lottery Fund – Reshaping Communities and we intend to do that.

“We have received legacies from two of our members. Lawrie Inman left us £165,880. Lawrie was born and raised in Poppleton and a lifelong member of our church. He was a joiner by trade and worked for Shepherds the builders. Kay Hebditch left us £15,000.

“In addition, we are preparing grant applications to a variety of other bodies such as Methodist Insurance, All Churches Trust, Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation, Joseph Rank Trust and Garfield Weston Foundation.”

He said other fundraising events which had been held included a bridge afternoon, a summer concert and a spring fair, and planned events included a murder mystery evening on November 17 in the hall.