New Greek church - first in UK for more than 100 years - progressing well

Its worshippers, drawn from a 10,000-strong Greek community spread over Harrow and Brent, began sharing what was originally known as the Holy Spirit Mission Church with the resident Anglican congregation there in 1989.
The congregation purchase of the church and vicarage outright in 1994 and after paying off the mortgage three years later began working on plans to construct a new church at a cost of £3m.
Father Anastasios Salapatas said: "First of all, it will be quite big - 17m in height and 34m long.
"Two main architectural characters of Greek churches that we have are a cross-shaped building and a dome on top to symbolise the heavens and on the inside of the dome we will paint images of Jesus.
"We are building a bell tower on the front and there's going to be at least two bells.
"We had a meeting with neighbours and they said they missed the ringing of the bells of the Anglican church as their numbers diminished, so we may be able to start to do it again."
The builders are six weeks ahead of schedule and it is hoped the church will be open in time to celebrate Christmas 2010. In the meantime, worshippers are holding services in a community hall on the same site.
Fr Salapatas said: "The church will remind them of their homeland and the village churches where most of them have come from and it will serve them in a much better way, not least the size.
"But it's not about the architecture, it's about spirituality. The beauty of it - the splendour of it - is important to them and it will provide a ministry and a witness to people of Eastern Orthodox spirituality."
Even at this early stage the church has become an attraction for religious leaders, academics, and the Cyprian broadcast media in particular, due to its rarity.
Fr Salapatas explained: "There are 300,000 Greeks in the UK and 115 church communities.
"Only four have actually built a purpose-built Greek Orthodox church. The last one was built over a century ago in Cardiff."