End of the DIY church

DEMOLITION began this week on the building they called the Pineapple Church, an extraordinary example of ecclesiastical architecture.

The Moon Rocket will remain.

The Anglican church of Christ the King is in Bowburn, near Durham, the nickname from the fibre-glass domed roof that was said to symbolise the crown of thorns. The free-standing "rocket", a local landmark, was the spire.

Though professionally designed - and architecturally award winning - the building work was undertaken by parish volunteers. Begun in 1964, it was another 12 years before it was completed - and fewer than 30 more before it closed, the roof leaking like a garrulous government.

The crown of thorns had become a bed of nails.

"It was a good church, a lovely church, a happy church with a happy atmosphere,"

says Maureen Robinson, one of the churchwardens. "The exterior was hated from the moment it went up, but the interior has been much loved.

"Ugly as it was, I think many people will be sad to see it come down. We were very happy there, even when we had to move around during services to stop being rained upon."

Throughout its life, only two couples were married there. "They weren't bothered about the lovely interior," says Maureen, "they just didn't want their photographs taken outside."

Architectural author Nikolaus Pevsner described the roof as like a playground inflatable and thought the rocket "gimmicky".

The DIY church was the inspiration of Co Durham born Father Bill Armstrong, a man who divided opinions. Including meeting rooms, lounge, coffee bar, showers and even a bus garage, it was expected to cost £28,000. The rocket, delivered in 1963, cost £1,500.

Most parishioners wanted that to take off, too - "we thought it would stick out like a sore thumb," says Maureen - but Durham diocesan authorities disagreed, claiming that Bowburn villagers regarded it as a homecoming landmark. Maureen now believes that they were right.

The church closed in 2004, though Maureen still lit a votive candle every day until the building was deemed too dangerous for her to enter. It was she, too, who bought 16,000 second class stamps for appeal letters to help build a replacement.

The appeal cleared around £6,000 - "just a drop in the bucket, really, for all that hard work".

The original £1.1m replacement plan has now been revised to £800,000. If a Lottery bid is successful, they hope to have a new church within three years but presently, happily, share with the village Methodists.

Maureen sadly watches the workmen.

"People have laughed about this church and talked about this church, but it's been part of Bowburn. You can never prepare yourself, people are still going to get an awful shock when it's gone."

T HE Rev Bill Armstrong, the man who inspired the Pineapple Church, was described by The Northern Echo in 1973 - described, in truth, by me - as "possibly the most controversial priest ever ordained by a Bishop of Durham".

That column then talked of his view that gender was irrelevant - "I don't go to bed with men or women, I go to bed with people" - about how the Diocese of Durham had been out to get him, why the Church was out of touch and why you should never eat with anyone you weren't prepared to go to bed with.

"That's why I think cannibalism is important,"

he added, a little bizarrely.

If ever there were a turbulent priest - a phrase first used of Thomas Becket - it was the man everyone called Father Bill.

Born into a Methodist family at Hare Law, near Stanley, he decided at 14 that he wanted to be ordained into the CofE but was so disgusted when the church placed him on a general arts course at Durham University that he wrote only his name and age on the examination paper.

After army service - inexplicably switched from DLI to Dental Corps - he was eventually ordained, a curate in Ferryhill and in Hebburn before, in 1960, becoming priestin- charge of Cassop-cum- Quarrington, a parish embracing the mid- Durham pit villages of Cassop, Bowburn and Quarrington Hill.

Father Bill swiftly made an impression, friends and enemies gained with equal facility.

Some said he was revitalising the parish, others that he was destroying it. Accusations included Communism, dictatorship and drinking - black and tans, no less.

"He was very forward thinking,"

says Maureen Robinson.

"He realised that young people were the future of the church and put that into action, but he did upset a lot of the older ones."

The vicarage became an ever-open house, where youngsters were free to come and go. Youth holidays were undertaken in two old parish buses, named Samson and Dalilah.

Though many complaints had been made to the Bishop of Durham, the community was still utterly shocked when, in 1963, their 34-year-old priest faced 11 charges of gross indecency with boys, the court hearing admissions that young parishioners had stripped him naked - "horseplay" said Father Bill - and that he regularly slept naked with one or more young parishioners. He insisted that nothing untoward happened.

The press loved it, of course, his beard almost as fascinating as his bachelorhood.

Defence counsel described him as "not a copybook priest" but a real, devout, practising, convinced Christian. "There is plenty of room for a dog which will bark rather than a world full of sheep,"

added his QC.

The Bishop of Jarrow, who with the Bishop of Durham had stood bail, described Father Bill as unusual. "He is not," he conceded, "the average person's idea of a priest."

After two trials, Father Bill was acquitted at Newcastle assizes, returned to the parish from which he had been suspended - and excluded as a condition of bail - but left in 1966 to become a bush padre in North Queensland.

Maureen Robinson had been married by him. "We were a mining village, very insular and probably extremely naive," she says. "Half the time we probably couldn't believe what was happening. They were extremely strange days.

"Opinions had been formed before he ever went to court. He had been judged and found wanting."

By the time he returned to visit family in 1973 - a stay which included just ten minutes in Bowburn - he was a teacher in the outback and hoped to open a restaurant. "The church is irrelevant,"

he said. "I don't think it speaks to man's condition."

When last heard of, he had returned to the UK and was living in the south of England.