The Sunderland church which moved eight inches all on its own

Heard the one about the Sunderland church which moved by itself?

It happened at Herrington Street Methodist Mission which made Echo headlines in April 1952 - because it had shifted eight inches.

The appeal to save a church on the move

The 84 year old mission was deemed to be ‘generally unsafe’ because of the amount of movement it had seen since it was built.

Back in 1952, an appeal was launched to raise £3,000 scheme to repair the building.

However, it had closed by 1974 and was eventually demolished.

7,000 hours of work to clean this Bridge Street venue

That same month in 1952, another Sunderland church captured our interest.

St Marys Church got a facelift which took ten weeks and saw an inch of grime and dirt removed in some parts of the building.

The Roman Catholic Church in Bridge Street saw an average of 15 workers on the project at a time under the leadership of the foreman, Mr B Pattinson.

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They cleaned, scraped, washed down and 'touched up' the 117 year old church in nearly 7,000 man hours.

Altogether they removed about ten tons of stone and used up about six tons of cement.

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