Everything Must Go

Between 1994 and 1997 I lived in Chatham. Officially I resided in the parish of All Saints but didn't worship there, instead going to SS Mary & St John's in the town centre.
SS Mary & John, which began life as St John the Divine until the original parish church of St Mary up the hill closed and the parishes were amalgamated, had seen better days even then. It had been a grand old High Church establishment once upon a time, and once a year still hosted a slightly freakish Mass celebrated by members of the Guild of the Servants of the Sanctuary, which always included some amusing mishap such as the thurifer banging the thurible into the pulpit and sending sparks flying everywhere, or the organist's hearing aid picking up Radio 4 and blasting it into the church. When the centre of Chatham was butchered, sorry, reorganised, a central ring road isolated the church from the town centre. It wasn't easy to get to, there wasn't a lot of parking round about - you can see a large and disagreeable car park in this photo, but it was on the wrong side of the road -  and the immediate surroundings were pretty unimpressive.

While I was there, we decided (or agreed to go along with the suggestion) that we amalgamate with the United Reformed congregation which was at least on the right side of the ring road. I thought of it in terms of the re-establishment of Catholic order, one church in one place. The move didn't happen while I was there, but some time later.

And so the Emmaus Church came into being. Meanwhile, the lovely old building of St John the Divine remained. In 2004 the church housed 'Chatham Vines', a public art project jointly funded by Medway Arts and the Diocese of Rochester, which involved growing vines hydroponically within the church; but that's been it. Nobody's bought the building, it serves no purpose, apart from adding an incongruously grand element in the Medway Townscape. There's a photograph on a gentleman's Flickr stream here on which somebody has left the heartbreaking comment 'I always used to walk past this every morning, and wonder what it was'. Eventually it will presumably end up like the Dockyard Church at Sheerness not far away, which it so closely resembles:

Then I happened to be checking the Walton Church Antiques website and found that they have a whole collection of kit from my old church. I know (from experience) that stuff ends up at Church Antiques when it's no longer really needed, but it still makes me feel very ambiguous that things that may have been used in worship when I was there are now in their warehouse awaiting somebody to buy them. I may go along and find something as a keepsake.