Great Doors: From Silloth to Heaven

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Mon, 10/03/2025 - 00:00

I recently called at Silloth-on-Solway, that rather isolated and old fashioned mid-Victorian railway and seaside resort on the very top of England, overlooking Scotland's southern coast. It is a peculiar place, and not dissimilar in layout to Victorian towns in America and Australia, with wide, straight roads, and three-storey buildings on each side. There are no higgledy-piggledy lanes, wonky cottages or narrow, twisting roads which characterise our more typical settlements. All seems to be rectangular, measured and carefully planned.

Not only has the nineteenth-century layout remained, but also the little 'mission hall' culture. There is a Pentecostal church (below) and a Free Evangelical Church (above), the latter's building helpfully containing a date stone: 1938. The nation had declined between the 1860 and 1938, both economically and spiritually, but still some vigour there remained in both areas. Although the Free Church is rather plain and barn-like in its construction, and the red crosses in the window do little to enhance it, the brick door-surround is somewhat art deco, and of that decade’s most fashionable style. So we have a plain mission hall but with a rather imposing doorway. I had not the option of entering and sniffing around, but I imagine it has a fairly standard interior, with little to excite the fancies. But that door surround- that really impressed me.

Increasing numbers of people who begin to attend church have little idea of what to expect and what goes on. Yet to enter a Bible-believing, gospel-preaching church is to pass through a grand doorway, a portal to another world. There, eternal truth is proclaimed, the end of time anticipated, the escape from hell shared and the grace and glories of Christ received. To plain churches we might belong, but through their doors are wonders unseen.