Lincolnshire Voice

By now you will have heard that the Grade 2 listed church in Boultham Ward, Lincoln has been destroyed by a fire.

Follow up:

Members of the local BNP have been trying to preserve this 1912 tin tabernacle church for some years now. This fell into disrepair in 2000 when the fire brigade said they would not enter the building as it needed bringing up to the latest standards. The church subsequently sold this to the Islamic Association of Lincoln (allegedly with help from Labour councillors) with a view to turning this into a mosque. We would have liked to see the church remain and indeed some local council tax money/lottery funding spent on preserving our culture for a change and keeping it open for all of the local community – which is what it was intended for.

We put 8700 leaflets out in April and May this year in this ward alone, with some areas getting 4 leaflets. Following our leafleting outlining our opposition to the proposed conversion from the church into a mosque the Lincolnshire Echo got involved and articles were published.

We were somewhat bemused with several media reports stating conflicting numbers who would use the proposed mosque. Following this, we did our own research and found the Islamic Association of Lincoln website that was linked to a new website http://lincolnmosque.ebody.co.uk/new/ talking about their new mosque (before a decision had even been made!) that would serve 2000 Muslims in and around Lincoln. These figures were mentioned by the objector at the planning committee meeting which was ignored as apparently the figures did not matter (parking?) and when the Islamic Association representative spoke he denied those figures and said there would be only 100-200 using it, despite their own website advising otherwise. Make of that what you will but we would assume that was to appear to reduce the supposed parking impact in the area.

Suffice to say, we tried everything possible in planning terms to prevent this from happening and the planning committee meeting was a farce with the labour councillor, knowing full well that residents were opposed to this due to potential parking problems, stood up at the meeting and said there were no problems whatsoever and it should be granted permission, which it was. In reality the decision was made years ago and nothing we could do politically would stop this.

On 29th August there was a fire that has destroyed the church, including its listed altar. The Islamic Association then declared it was a hate crime against them, which is ironic considering it was an attack on a church as it had not been turned into a mosque yet. Latest news appears that the Police do not know how it was caused, but we shall see how things progress.

This is all that is left of almost 100 years of English Christian heritage which can never be replaced.