A HISTORIC Worcester city centre church is still looking for more volunteers to enable it to open extra days.

Lunchtime organ recitals at St Swithun’s Church have seen a rise in attendances but the church is only able to open for a short time on Fridays and Saturdays.

It needs more people before it can extend the hours but is still looking for help.

“We put out an appeal a few weeks ago but I’m afraid we didn’t have anyone come forward,” said Will Scott, chairman of the church friends group. “We don’t need many people. We have a couple of volunteers on the days we open who work in shifts so if we had just two more we could probably open another day.

“It’s a lovely building but it’s under-used at the moment.” The church is under the guardianshihp of the Churches Conservation Trust, which launched a policy of increasing public access to its 340 churches nationwide in June.

St Swithun’s is still able to open only from 11am to 3pm on Fridays and 11am to 4pm on Saturdays. But it has an increasingly popular attraction in the series of organ recitals, which are attracting an average audience of 38 people and one, by James Laxton, attracted a crowd of 70 people. They take place on Fridays at 1.10pm using the church’s own 1795 Gray organ and a reconstructed Tudor instrument belonging to the Royal College of Organists which is at present being housed in the church.

The Wetheringsett organ dates back to 1532 and was named after the place in Suffolk where it was found.

“You can listen to the sound that would have been heard in the days of Henry VIII,” Mr Scott said.

“Our lunchtime recitals are going well. The church is cool so it’s a great place to chill out or if the weather turns, to shelter from the rain. You can bring in your sandwiches to eat while listening to the organ music and we will make the tea and coffee.” The recitals are free but a donation is requested.

Mr Scott also said the friends now intended to create replicas of urns which went missing from the church after an appeal failed to find the missing originals.

Mr Scott said they will be replaced by replicas when the roof is refurbished in the next couple of years.

“Even if we found them now in someone’s garden, we would only use them for the design and we intend to create replicas hopefully with the help of the stonemasons from the cathedral,” he said.

Anyone interested in volunteering can call Mr Scott on 01905 354629.