Wigan church launches £1m fund-raising appeal

Queen's Hall Methodist Mission, based in Wigan town centre, has launched a £1m fund-raising appeal to revamp its 120-year-old building.

Transcript

00:00 My name is John Parker and I'm from Queen's Hall Methodist Church in Market Street, centre of Wigan.

00:06 I just want to explain a little bit about fundraising.

00:11 We're having a major fundraising for our building.

00:16 This church goes back 120 years and it's been very much involved in social action right from the beginning.

00:29 It used to deal with people who were drunk and all the ramifications of drunkenness.

00:35 So we want to refurbish this building so that we can do more community action, more social action as well as being a church.

00:44 It just so happens that the site opposite us has been flattened and there's going to be all sorts of things done there.

00:51 But from our perspective the wonderful thing is that they're going to put in 460 units of housing, 460 homes.

00:59 And they're going to be walking distance so for the first time in decades we can actually have people come walk here.

01:08 So we want to put in more facilities to meet community needs, along social action, community action, so that this building can be used.

01:17 Our business plan shows that we're expecting the numbers, we've got 660 footfalls in this place every week.

01:25 We're expecting if our plans come to fruition that it will go up to a thousand a week.

01:31 So we'll be doing more than what we've been doing for the last 120 years, evangelism and social action.

01:40 And that's what the appeal is for. Thank you.