AFTER months of uncertainty and speculation over its future, one of the area's oldest churches has finally closed it doors after a 100-strong congregation gave it a big send-off.

Cambridge Park Memorial Church in Wanstead has held its final service at 6:30 last Sunday (May 23), after the cost of repairing its badly-damaged roof was declared too expensive by the building's owners.

More than 100 people from across the area – representing the 13 churches of the London Forest circuit – attended the service The congregation from the Cambridge Park church have now joined with those at Hermon Hill Methodist Church at the other end of Wanstead High Street to form a new Wanstead Methodist Church.

At the final service, superintendent minister Rev Andrew Fielding argued in his address that churches are spiritually precious to Christian, but that the faith is bigger than buildings.

He said: “The new church is not a merger in business terms or a coalition in poitical terms but a transformation in spiritual terms.”

Last month, Reverend Eleanor Jackson confirmed that the church would close and permission would be sought to sell the building, although so far no date has yet been set for the decision.

On April 11, former members of the congregation, who now live across the country, were invited back for a service and a party afterwards, to reunite old friends who, in some cases, had not seen each other for decades.

The present building opened on Cambridge Park in 1875, before becoming part of the United Methodist Church in 1907 and of the modern-day Methodist Church at the time of the reunion of 1932.