When I first considered the Plane Street church as a candidate for this project I knew nothing about the complexities of the buillding's recent history.
I began with the idea of asking the people who lived (many of them quite literally) in the church's shadow how its presence affected them, how they related to the building, what, if any, flights of fancy they harboured about the church. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I was fascinated by the way in which churches like the one on Plane Street, dominate the communities which surround them.
I began though by contacting the Methodists themselves and that's when the story began to take shape. I was told about the preservation order being placed on the church, about the death knell this sounded for the church members' plans for the building's future and of the subsequent, inevitable decision to close the church.
I was also told of the impact the closure had had on the church members, many of whom were deeply shocked by the experience, to the point where they would have no wish to have the wounds caused by the manner of the churches loss reopened by a project which sought to investigate their feelings toward the building.
Ironically it was the evident strength of feeling associated with the building which made me all the more curious to explore the story further.
