It isn’t the kind of building you’d notice on Google Maps. A red brick set amidst terraces of red brick. The Mission is a working, sleeves-rolled-up place, somewhat larger than the surrounding houses, but no more ornate. Like many of its type, set in poorer streets across the land, it is loved with a rough, unsentimental familiarity and relied on to do its work.
In past times, the Mission performed its original purpose as a non-denominational meeting- house with both religious and educational aims. Working children were sent to Sunday school there and, after a modest lunch, spent afternoons struggling with reading, writing and adding-up.
With the passing of the various Factory and Education Acts, the Mission nurtured its locality in different ways: dancing classes, music exams, a local choir, a lunch club for seniors. It was sometimes hired out for wedding receptions and children’s parties and Santa always paid a visit – still does. At the moment it hosts a food bank with a café attached (pay what you can) and a room with several computers for after school study, adult literacy groups and weekly ESOL classes.
Who would have thought, then, that the Mission would become the centre for local plotting and subterfuge? Once the governors received a letter explaining that the Mission and surrounding terraces would be demolished to make way for flats (some ‘affordable’) and a purpose built ‘community hub’ (no mention of a food bank), they called a meeting of Mission users and local people.
Word got around and the meeting was packed with local warriors who didn’t even consider the possibility of losing either the Mission or the surrounding terraces. True, some buildings were a bit the worse for wear but they served, and they served well. The focus was on how to stop the plans. Interestingly, no one forsook the self-help ethos of the Mission to suggest a campaign of writing to MPs and Councillors.
One bright spark, who had made good use of the Mission’s internet facilities, told of how discoveries of rare plant or insect life had been used to stop or slow down road building.
The discovery of rare and threatened species held promise as a tactic.
‘What about the belfry? Must be bats and all sorts up there,’ the caretake suggested.
‘We need a chiropterologist,’ chirped up the bright kid with the internet habit. ‘It’s a person who studies bats. I can look it up and see if there is one round here’.
The Council was duly informed by the Mission Board that a group of bat fanciers had been alerted to the suspected presence of a rare strain of bats currently residing in the disused Mission bell tower. The Council, veterans of similar campaigns and smelling defeat, cut their losses early and cancelled the building contracts.
Mission life drew a curtain over the intrusion and continued as before, coping admirably with the newly aroused interest in urban wildlife and offers of a slot on the local TV news.
