A church in Pembrokeshire founded by St Madoc, a pupil of St David, is to hold its final service as to the congregation has dwindled to two.
Believed to have been founded in 583, St Madoc of Ferns in Haroldston West has been a place of worship for nearly 1,500 years.
Church warden Diana Thomas, said, "I’m devastated – I've been using the church for 40 years and I have had a lot of family connections with it, marriages and funerals, that sort of thing.”
Yet, she accepted, "things change and that is the position we are in", adding, "I'm 80 years old for God's sake, and I feel it. I'm just unable to do it all the time and the other church warden feels the same way." She reported that because so many properties in Pembrokeshire are holiday homes there are not enough people to sustain the church.
It is expected to have its last service at the end of July. The hope now is for the Church in Wales building to become a community centre.
Shirley and Ian Norman organised a meeting to see if the building could be taken over
The wardens are volunteers who look after the church and prepare it for services.
Ms Thomas remembers when there were regularly 30 or 40 people attending services. The church can hold 50 worshippers. "It was near enough a full church at that time, and we had a lot more services," she said.
"It was a flourishing little church but people have moved away and people die and new people are not coming in."
It is in the parish of Revd David Mortimore. He said: "It's in a farming area where there are only 100 houses in the parish and some of them are holiday homes.
"So we only have two ladies who are getting elderly and are unable to keep going."
Revd Mortimore said there are historically a lot of churches in Pembrokeshire because of the many farming communities they supported before the advent of mass tourism.
A meeting organised by the Havens History Group on 11 May resulted in a plan for the building to be taken over by a community group.
Shirley Norman, who belongs to the history group and runs Littlehaven's Boathouse Gallery, said about 30 attended.
"We have 12 people who are definitely willing to help and who left their contact details,” she said.
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