IN the next few days, a Church Commissioner will conduct an enquiry into the future of St Paul’s Church, which stands clad in scaffold alongside Tregolls Road. The listed church tower is landmark in our townscape, designed by the eminent Norman Sedding and constructed from polyphant stone – beloved by sculptors but useless for building! Thanks, Norman …

The church was built when St Clement Parish extended across the north side of Truro Vale to what we now know as Moresk Road (formerly Goodwives Lane). You can see a granite marker still standing in the hedge. The parish decided that growth in population justified a new provision because it was a long way to St Clement Church.

As well as residential development, the church offered more accessible worship and pastoral support to the Union Workhouse, the CofE Teacher Training College and St Paul’s ‘Teaching School’ (now Tregolls Manor), and to seafarers coming and going from Truro’s busy trading port.

The polyphant stone was the main cause for closing the church some 15 years ago. The Church Commissioners have tried very hard to find a new purpose and a new owner, but to no avail. Its future hangs on the outcome of next week’s inquiry; its demolition is pretty much a done deal. The scaffolding attests to the increasing risk and structural decline of the building.

But what’s to be done with the land?

If population growth caused St Paul’s to be built, then that growth has continued, almost unabated ever since: Uplands, Beechwood Park (on land enabled by the Duchy under Bono Vacantia), the Duchy developments at Belvedere and Newquay Road, as well as Penair, Tregolls and Archbishop Benson Schools.

The case for some form of spiritual and pastoral provision on a site until recently consecrated and dedicated to such social and cultural service is strengthening.

Cllr Bert Biscoe (Independent, Moresk & Trehaverne)