Vision barn again! Christian dream becomes a reality after farming couple join the flock

Fox wrote: "From the top of the hill, The Lord let me see in what place he had a great people to be gathered."

Just over a decade ago, a Newchurch farmer's wife - standing not so far from where Fox had stood - also had a vision in which God told her to convert a barn into a place of prayer and peace.

Today, work on the Shekinah Christian Centre is well under way and soon from its hillside perch in the shadow of Pendle, with Sabden Brook carving the valley below, it will be capable of reaching the rest of the world.

The farmer's wife was Sylvia Capstick who, like her husband was steeped in agriculture. Her husband Peter was brought up in Bolton-by-Bowland and after leaving school started work on a farm in Gisburn.

Yet when Mrs Capstick told her husband that God needed their barn, which at the time housed the shippon for their dairy herd, Mr Capstick readily agreed.

At a time of life when most men would be thinking in terms of pension funds for financial security in old age Peter Capstick quite happily took on what most would have considered a terrible gamble and quit farming.

It did not happen overnight. For a start they were only tenants of Saddlers Farm but the couple, married for 31 years with three grown-up daughters, got the unexpected chance of buying it. Next they sold most of the land, the dairy herd and milk quota to finance the project and with unshakable faith embarked on what to anyone else would have been a precarious mission. Mr Capstick describes Shekinah as: "A place for the weary warriors of Christ to come for rest and healing."

It is inter-denominational and in 1994 it became the Shekinah Christian Trust and a registered charity. Its first chairman was a nearby clergyman who saw the great need for this Christian centre, the Vicar of Fence, the Rev Norman Howard.

The position is currently held by Canon Stewart Hartley, Vicar of St Philip's, Nelson, with St John's, Great Marsden.

The name Shekinah comes from the Hebrew meaning "The glory of God" and the landscape in which the centre is set has played a great part in local history. Before Fox's visit a neighbouring farm was said to be the home of two of the Pendle witches, who were really wretched victims of religious persecution.

Shekinah can take advantage of modern technology and, most of all, the Internet. It is already available on www.shekinah.org.uk. The Capsticks soon hope to utilise the Internet further by joining Shekinah into a worldwide network of prayer and so, from this little bit of Pendleside, reach out to the rest of the world.

Money does come into it. When the trust was formed the barn, the cottage and some land was given over to it for a nominal sum. Converting the big barn to provide en-suite accommodation for 18 residents in eight bedrooms with full and half board services will cost in the region of £375,000. So far £80,000 has been raised, enabling the barn to be re-roofed and the interior walls built. It is hoped to have the building work completed by the summer of 2001. Mr and Mrs Capstick, however, do not believe in asking for money.

Mr Capstick said: "If you ask you don't get. If I tell people about the vision, which I was invited to share at Blackburn Cathedral, and explain the aims we want to accomplish here - to deepen people's Christian faith through prayer and healing, provide rest, peace and a sense of God's presence - something always turns up.

And it does. One single donation was for £29,000.

"I am as confident today about Shekinah as when my wife first told me," Mr Capstick said.

And that comes from a man who, until he found Christianity, says he came originally from a family which did not bother to go to church and, if anything, had been an atheist.

"God provides everything we need," he said.

Mr and Mrs Capstick are pictured outside the barn which is set to become a Christian retreat

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.