The decision to close the church was taken because of the low number of people now worshipping there – only around ten.
But for the final service it was packed with a congregation of some 160.
The minister, the Rev Chris White, said: ‘Every pew and chair was taken.
It was bursting at the seams.’ The first service in the church was on 5 January 1840, and the church was built in the then ‘new town’ of Gorey to accommodate a congregation of oyster fishermen – around 250 to 300 people worshipped there regularly during the boom years of the oyster fisheries.
The last service took place on 6 January 2006, with a sermon preached by the Methodist Superintendent, the Rev David Coote, and a lesson read by the former St Brelade Constable, Enid Quénault.
A total of 15 representatives from every Methodist church in the Island attended the service, and were presented with a lit candle and a copy of St Mark’s Gospel, to signify that although the church has closed in Gorey, it was not ‘the end of the story’.
The cross which has hung on the wall of the church is being presented to a Methodist church in St Lucia in the Caribbean, and the Communion Tray has been donated to the Chapel of the Good Shepherd in the Hospital.
