AROUND 200 volunteers will be helping to build the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New Kingdom Hall in Blackburn.

The single storey building will be erected in Whalley New Road and will create a hub for the two congregations, who have to travel out of town for meetings.

The pre-fabricated building, which cost £500,000, has been funded by the sale of the old place of worship on St Peter’s Street in Blackburn and donations from the congregations over the past decade.

The drainage work for the building has begun and the foundations are due to be laid in the next fortnight.

The building is expected to be complete by late July.

Bill Boule, assistant design coordinator, said: “Skilled builders from ministries in the area will be helped by volunteers, mainly at weekends.

“There will be nearly 200 people on site during the busiest weekend. All the different tradesmen will be working together.

“The timber frame and the roof will go up in around two days. There will be people laying bricks on the outside while people are putting up plasterboard walls inside.”

The new hall will reunite the two Blackburn congregations – Breakwater and Roe Lee – which each have around 80 members.

It will include a main worship hall, two smaller teaching rooms, toilets and a kitchen area.

Bill said: “It will be brilliant. It will be the first time in about 10 years that the two groups have been under the same roof.”

The new hall will be built on the site of the former Cemetery Hotel.