People patronized these pubs massively, as they go their to drink, take traditional pub meals and enjoy the cultural ambiance.
However, things are rapidly changing, and so are these landmarks closing; there are reportedly only about 39,000 of them left in the whole of England.
According to recent reports, their are now more churches than pubs as announced in recent figures from the National Churches Trust.
However, the overall number of churches are failing too, only that they aren't too fast. America, UK and other parts of the world are gradually loosing their grips on Christianity.
The three biggest UK denominations- Roman Catholics, Presbyterians and the Anglicans are all declining quiet rapidly.
Recent surveys show that the people say they have 'no religions', but still believe in God, believe they have a soul and even read the Bible.
These developments however actually result in substantial growth among certain types of churches in the UK, all in the context of God's promise to build his church.
The overall members of the three biggest denominations have gone down by 16% in the last five years, and the two other major groups, the Baptists and Methodists are not also left behind.
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The three major denominations form around 60% of church members, while the smaller two form 16%. The remaining belong to the other types of churches who are seeing the most growth now, many of which have a Pentecostal bent.
Their increase, however is sadly not enough to compensate for the drop among the bigger churches.
We'll see below which which kinds of churches are growing the fastest amid demographic shifts in the UK.
Immigrant churches, black majority churches, and reverse mission churches
London is no doubt a center for growing churches. Between years 2005 and 2012, overall church attendance (not basically membership) saw a 16% increase, rising from 620,000 people to 720,000.
The number of churches increased at the rate of two churches a week, going from 4,100 to 4,800. During this time, the city welcomed immigrants and had its population grow from 7 million to 8 million in 10 years.
Most of the new immigrants were Christians and were looking for churches that spoke their languages. There were more than 50 different languages being spoken in the London churches and 14% of the overall services weren't help in English Language.The trend also spread into other major urban areas, and people were drawn to others who share the same languages.
Many of the services conducted in other languages are Roman Catholic, while another significant majority were the 'black churches' also called the Black Majority Churches (BMCs). They too are immigrants but have been in the United Kingdom for much longer.
They first came as a part of the Windrush generation, named for the ship that berthed in 1948 with so many of them from the West Indies (the Caribbean) but were initially rejected by the native white churches and so formed their own groups such as the New Testament Church of God, Apostolic Church, Elim Pentecostal Church, Assemblies of God and so on.
They have been joined in the last decade or so by others coming from West Africa, the 'reverse mission' churches such as the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Mountain of Fire Ministries, Potters House Christian Fellowship, Church of Pentecost and a good number of others. Many of these are starting their own new churches.
Talking about the Redeemed Christian Church of God, for instance, has started over 800 churches in the UK since 1993. It is led by a man with vision, Pastor Agu Irukwu and his 4,000- strong Church Of All Nations in Brent, West London, adopted the mantra, 'a church within every 10 minutes walking distance'.
This is of course typical in Nigeria, where the churches are all at close distances to the members.
It is effectively the 'parish' system used by the three largest denominations, though the RCCG pursue it energetically: '...you live near us, come and join us, you'll enjoy it, we're warm and lively, and you haven’t far to go...'
Many people respond positively, and the RCCG has grown to become to largest Pentecostal denomination in the United Kingdom.
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