THE demolition of a Bournemouth church has temporarily opened up a view of the town that has not been seen for almost 60 years.

The Punshon Memorial Church on Exeter Road has finally been flattened, seven years after being sold for development.

It will be replaced with 107 flats, 45 of them for use by holiday-makers.

The disappearance of the church, with its distinctive spire, has revealed views across from the BIC to the Royal Exeter Hotel and Exeter Park Crescent beyond.

Bournemouth Echo:

Those views, unseen since 1958, will remain until the block of flats starts to take shape.

The town’s first Punshon Memorial Church was a Gothic Cathedral-like structure, built in 1886, on Richmond Hill.

It was the brainchild of the Rev William Morley Punshon, who intended it to serve the growing influx of visitors to the town, and it was known as the holiday-makers’ church.

The original church was destroyed in an air raid on May 23, 1943. Although the bombing took place on a Sunday, no one was in the church – but 77 people died elsewhere in the town.

Worship moved to the nearby Church House until a new church, designed by architect Ronald Sims, opened in 1958, on a site formerly occupied by the Hive and Waterford hotels.

The church continued to welcome visitors – with up to 40 per cent of its congregation made up of holiday-makers.

Among the more famous visitors were Labour leader Neil Kinnock in 1985 and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who read from the Gospel of Matthew there in 2007.

But that year, faced with dwindling attendances, the Methodist church decided to sell the sit and merge the congregation with Southbourne Methodist Church to create Trinity Methodist Church.

The current plans were approved by Bournemouth’s planning committee, despite officers noting that the 1950s building had “significant architectural merit”.

Bournemouth Tourism backed the scheme but Bournemouth Civic Society said the new plans were “too massive, too high above all too aesthetically weird”.