CONTROVERSIAL plans to open a pub just yards from an ancient Hampshire church have sparked more than 170 protests, the Daily Echo can reveal.

Council chiefs have been inundated with letters objecting to an application to convert a furnishings shop next door to the 13th century St Thomas’s Church in Lymington.

The plan has been submitted by the Wetherspoon chain.

Objectors claim customers using the pub and its beer garden would upset people attending weddings, funerals and concerts at the church.

Elizabeth Stewart, of Monmouth Court, Lymington, said: “Imagine a funeral cortege drawing up, with revellers outside the pub drinking and making a noise.”

Fellow protester Neville Lewcock, of Cavendish Place, Lymington, cited the pub’s potential impact on the church and the nearby Monmouth House old people’s home.

“Both would be severely adversely affected by the clientele such a venue would inevitably attract,” he said.

Planning officers at New Forest District Council have also received an objection from their colleagues in the environmental health unit, who say the pub would be too noisy.

As reported in the Daily Echo, the proposal has come under fire from the vicar of St Thomas’s, the Reverend Peter Salisbury.

He said: “A church and its churchyard are traditionally places of quiet and dignity in our culture and the siting of a pub next door would be offensive to many people.

“People who attend weddings and funerals at St Thomas’s expect them to be conducted in an appropriate manner and in an atmosphere of respect.”

A Wetherspoon spokesman said: “The company runs more than 760 pubs and has an extremely good reputation, backed up by numerous awards, for the way in which they’re run.

“We believe the pub will be an asset to the area.

“To suggest that X or Y might happen, before the pub has even opened, might be a little premature.”