PARISHIONERS of St Thomas with St Jude Church in Blackburn are preparing to celebrate its centenary.

Special services and a party night are being planned by Fr Martin Daniels, who is also raising money to restore its peal of bells.

Birthday events take place on the first weekend in May and all former worshippers and church group members are invited.

When it was built in the early 1900s, the church could seat around 600 and many families who lived close in Accrington Road attended.

This photograph of youngsters of St Jude Sunday School taking a bow after presenting the pantomime Cinderella in the mid fifties, shows that it still then had a healthy congregation.

If you recognise yourself on stage or maybe even in the audience and would like to join in the 100-year celebrations, you can contact PCC secretary Eileen Hobkirk, nee Neild — she’s stood in the centre of the picture, with a white dress and crown as the Fairy Godmother — on 07989 771548.

The history of the church goes back to the 1880s, when Furthergate Brewery was taken from a Mrs Stapleton at a rent of £10 per year.

As attendances grew, the St Jude Mission Hall opened in Hozier Street, within the parish of St Thomas’s, itself a thriving church in Audley.

It was 1901 when the idea for a permanent church was made and worshippers spent many years fundraising, holding bazaars in the Exchange Hall.

Finally, in 1910, architects Messrs Gradwell and Sons of Victoria Street, Blackburn, drew up the plans for the £6,000 edifice. The foundation stone was laid by Mrs Yerburgh, of Woodfold Hall, after a parade by the People’s Mission Band and which was followed by a tea party and concert.

Mrs Yerburgh also presented an oak lectern in 1913, which is still in use today.

The new St Jude’s was consecrated in April, 1914 by the Bishop of Manchester and the first vicar was the Rev John Jennings.

Four years later, at the end of the Great War, a painting of a city ravaged by gunfire and bearing the names of the four men of the parish, killed in action and 36 others, who had served, was hung in the community room, before a more permanent memorial porch was built.

A recital was staged to mark th installation of a new organ 1926, while Easter Saturday, 1932, was a memorable day in the churches history, when eight bells were installed in the tower. Capable of playing 72 hymn tunes, the heaviest weighed five and a half cwt and the lightest was one cwt.

Mr S Roper, who represented the makers, Gillet and Johnston, made the first peal.

In our image from that day, Mr F Collins, who was to erect the bells in the tower, is seen on the left, with the vicar, the Rev Parker on the right.

In the early 90s, as the congregation dwindled, it was decided to demolish St Jude’s — the tower was retained — and build a combined church and community centre in its place.

Parishioners packed in for the final service, where the preacher, the Bishop of Blackburn the Rt Rev Alan Chesters, likened a last service to a funeral of a church.

Today St Thomas with St Jude – the former St Thomas’s was demolished some years ago – is fundraising to restore the bells first erected more than 70 years ago.