FED-UP parishioners have ignored warnings not to enter a boarded-up Catholic church in Aberystwyth in a bid to clean it up and get it back into use.

Members of the Catholic community in the town, angry and upset over the closure of St Winefride’s church on Queen’s Road, visited the site on Wednesday to start a clean-up operation to try to show the building is useable.

It follows an announcement by Bishop Thomas Burns that St Winefride’s, closed since 2012, will not reopen and that a derelict church in Penparcau will instead be renovated at the cost of £360,000 to act as a base for the congregation.

The announcement was greeted with uproar by a number of parishioners, who formed a protest group in response to the threat that St Winefride’s, built in 1874, would be lost.

Pam McKeever, one of the parishioners who attended the clean-up, said: “We took the risk to enter the church to clean it from top to bottom. We need to show that St Winefride’s can and should be brought back into use.

“We want it re-opened.”

Parishioner Lucy Huws told the Cambrian News that cleaning the church “demonstrated that the roof is not falling down nor the walls caving in, as the diocese would like parishioners believe”.

“Parishioners have got together, have given the church some TLC, moved the few spiders on and will hopefully be able to use the church for prayer and reflection.”

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