Jehovah's group to build hall in 3 days

A Jehovah's Witness community is planning to build, wire, plumb and furnish a new meeting house in less than three days in Co…

A Jehovah's Witness community is planning to build, wire, plumb and furnish a new meeting house in less than three days in Co Mayo.

More than 200 volunteer workers from around the country will start work on the 173 square metre building in Bekan, Ballyhaunis, on Friday morning, and plan to have the entire building completed and ready for use by Sunday evening.

The Kingdom Hall, which will be used by the Ballyhaunis congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, will be able to cater for up to 100 worshippers.

Using their own "quick-build" system, the religious group has built more than 50 similar halls in Northern Ireland and the Republic since 1985, utilising the skills of various members who provide their labour for free.

READ MORE

Mr Gerry Atwood, building project co-ordinator for the Jehovah's Witnesses in Ireland, said the system was based on a timber-frame construction, which enabled the walls and roof of a hall to be built very quickly.

"It was a system that was imported from America to England, and then over to Ireland," he said.

The first hall was built in Downpatrick in 1985, and since then Mr Atwood's team has refined the system for the construction of three basic hall designs.

The concrete foundations of the hall are laid in advance, along with a basic skeletal timber frame. The volunteers then work in teams to complete the walls, wiring, plumbing and interior.

Because of the speed at which the work is done, and with the labour provided for free, the halls can be built for around $50,000 (€41,280), a fraction of the cost of more traditional structures.

The Jehovah's Witnesses have encountered problems with finding affordable sites to build their halls.

Planning restrictions introduced by most local authorities make it almost impossible to obtain planning permission for sites not in the environs of towns or villages, according to Mr Atwood.

The Ballyhaunis congregation is part of a growing Jehovah's Witness community in Ireland. New members include migrants and local Irish converts.

According to the group's figures, there were 115 congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses on the island of Ireland in 2003, comprising just under 5,000 members. A total of 115 people were baptised into the congregations that year.