A CHRISTIAN fellowship is hoping to turn a disused railway station yard in Winterbourne Down into a vibrant Gospel Hall.

The Plymouth Brethren church organisation has submitted a planning application to pull down an abandoned ticket office and build a large meeting hall on the site, near Harecombe Hill.

The ticket office was built in 1898 for the London to Bristol railway line service but was closed along with the station in 1955.

In recent years the building has been used by Wessex Water to store equipment.

Up to 2,000 members of The Plymouth Brethren would use the Gospel Hall regularly on Sunday morning and Monday nights, and occasionally Thursday's and Friday's.

The Christian group, established in Plymouth in 1831, say the building would be solely used for worship.

The group had an application for a Gospel Hall in Armstrong Way, Yate, twice turned down by South Gloucestershire Council in 2006.

Daniel Weaver, of the Pegasus Planning Group, is acting agent for the group.

He said: "There are a number of special circumstances that fully justify the grant of planning permission for the proposed building.

"The Gospel Hall is a low key use that would not generate significant traffic or noise disturbance to neighbouring properties."

Four residents have written their support for the application while one asked for the station to be put back into use instead.

A decision on the planning application is likely to come from South Gloucestershire Council's planning watchdogs at the end of January.