WISBECH: Vandals force closure of St Peter and St Paul's Church for summer holidays
AN historic Wisbech church has been closed to the public during the school holidays because of a spate of vandalism. Janet Stevens, churchwarden for 25 years, said she had had never experienced vandalism of this kind before. In the latest incident, vandal
AN historic Wisbech church has been closed to the public during the school holidays because of a spate of vandalism.
Janet Stevens, churchwarden for 25 years, said she had had never experienced vandalism of this kind before.
In the latest incident, vandals entered St Peter and St Paul's Church and broke candles, scattered prayer books and hymn books, went under the altar and made a general mess. The mess took more than two hours to clean-up.
The church is usually left open during the daytime to allow worshippers or visitors to come and go as they please.
But during the school holidays the church has been targeted by what is believed to be youths.
The same problem occurred during the Whitsun half-term holiday in May, and when the latest incident happened last Monday, July 20, church officials decided enough was enough.
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Mrs Stevens said closing the church was a hard decision to take.
"We did not want to close the church, and there have been some people who have complained about it," she said. "But we could not do anything about it and we are terribly sorry.
"Enough is enough and we decided to close. We apologise to everyone who uses the church but we do not have enough people to be able to watch over the church when it is open."
However, the church will open Thursday and Friday mornings from 9.30-11.30am during the summer holidays and it will be reopened again as normal at the beginning of September.
Services will also be held as normal.
