Norwegian Church, Swansea
Coordinates: 51°37′12″N 3°55′08″W / 51.620°N 3.919°W
The Norwegian Church is a Grade II listed building in the docklands area of Swansea. The church building was originally located at Newport Docks. The building consists of a Seaman’s Mission to the west end and a single gothic church to the east end. It was originally built as a place of worship for Norwegian sailors when they visited the UK. It was relocated to Swansea in 1910 at a site directly opposite the Sainsbury's supermarket on the River Tawe.
In 1966 the Norwegian Seamen's Mission in Bergen told the last minister, Pastor Somerset, to abandon the Mission and return to Norway.
However, a Norwegian who had settled in Swansea, Eric Benneche, wrote to the Bishop of Bergen offering to run the church from the expatriate community's own resources. Permission was granted and the Bishop visited the church in person to present them with the key. Mr.Benneche was also allowed to officiate as a lay pastor at services, christenings, weddings and funerals.
He was followed in 1968 by the Reverend Vivian James (1927–2011).[1] who kept the church going for a further thirty years. He had been a missionary to Lapland, Norway from 1953–1967 and preached in both English and Norwegian. When Pastor James retired in 1997 the lease on the church was not renewed and the last working Seamen's Mission Church in Britain closed for good.[2]
With the redevelopment of the district, the building had to be relocated again. The building was covered in scaffolding and carefully dismantled and relocated alongside two other historic listed buildings - the Ice House and J Shed.