Fire-hit Wigan church cancels services until further notice

Our Lady Immaculate RC Church on Downall Green Road, Bryn, was logged with smoke after a blaze broke out on a wooden platform supporting its marble altar during the early hours of Monday May 16.

The parish priest, Fr John Gorman, raced to the building at about 4am after the alarm sounded to find the centre of the aisle ablaze and the premises filled with choking fumes.

The fire damge was confined to the platform, which was a relief to parishioners, but there is reconstruction work to be carried out and even though a Wigan fire crew used specialist ventilators to suck the smoke out of the church, the smell is expected to linger for a long time.

A spokesman for Liverpool RC Archdiocese said that services would not be held at Our Lady’s for the time being but this Sunday mass would be celebrated instead at the nearby Parish Centre at the usual times of 9.30am and 6.30pm.

The cause of the blaze is currently under investigation although the fire crew which attended did not think that there was anything suspicious and so the police have not been brought in.

It was suggested that there may have been a connection with a service that had been held there the previous evening but no-one was prepared to speculate as to whether candles or other flammable materials might have been involved.

The archdiocese spokesperson said that it was too early to say when normal services would resume.