The farm labourers of Hilperton Marsh always intended to build themselves a fine stone church with a steeple, oak doors and at least a couple of stained-glass windows in the High Victorian style. Something to rival St Michael and All Angels, up the road, where the gentry worshipped.

In the meantime, they were happy to settle for a flatpack prefabricated job from Harrods. Nothing permanent, you understand, just a pile of corrugated tin sheets, bolted together and with a simple pitched roof. It would have to do until the Lord — or some earthly benefactor — could provide.

That was 105 years ago and St Mary Magdalen, better known as the Tin Church, still stands in this corner of rural Wiltshire, gently rusting away. The congregation’s prayers for a permanent building were never answered. And each sabbath, there is more evidence of its frailty — a new rattle when the wind blows, a warning creak from the roof.

And so it might have continued until the man from Health and Safety came to take the measure of its days, recognised that in the midst of life we are in death, and slapped a demolition order on it.

Enter the Rev Bobby Magill, vicar of St Mary Magdalen and a doughty Glaswegian fighter. Mr Magill has refused to recognise the mortality of all things — or at least the inevitability of metal fatigue — and has launched a £60,000 appeal to give St Mary’s a new lease of life.

“I have never heard of another church quite like ours,” he said. “When you know about its history, and what it has meant to so many people down the years, it makes you determined to preserve it for another century.”

The story began in Knightsbridge more than a century ago when the Church of England was committed to the saving of souls in every outpost of the Empire. Harrods was then knocking out a nice line in DIY furnishings, decades before Ikea dreamt of bringing budget pine household fixtures to the masses. The London emporium sold entire billiard rooms in kit form complete with slate-bedded tables; prefab dog kennels; and most intriguingly of all, handy, bolt-together churches.

They were designed for missionaries to take on overseas forays, and could be erected in any terrain. But a market emerged at home, too, especially with poor congregations unable to afford more permanent monuments to their faith.

One such congregation was formed by the farmworkers of Hilperton Marsh, whose quest to build a church of their own typified the class divisions of Victorian society.

Every Sunday, Mr Magill said, agricultural labourers would walk a mile up the hill to worship at St Michael and All Angels, a commanding, stone-built church.

“But St Michael’s was used by the gentry, the landowners, and it was seen as ‘their’ church,” Mr Magill said. “The farmworkers were made to feel like second-class citizens. They pleaded with the bishop for permission to build their own church, and he agreed.”

A local philanthropist, Lord Long, donated the land, and the farmworkers subscribed pennies to build a church they could call their own. They could raise just enough cash to buy one of the Harrods flatpacks — and even then they bought it from another parish.

Their hand-me-down was hardly built to to stand for eternity, but where the other tin churches have tumbled, St Mary’s has survived — just about.

“I believe there was one in Gloucester until recently but that had to be demolished when the floor rotted away,” Mr Magill said. “I’m happy to say our floor feels solid beneath our feet.”

The church warden, Val Legg, said: “It’s an endless job keeping it going. We can carry on as we are just keeping St Mary’s open, but in time we will have to extend and update it to bring it into line with the law on things like access for disabled people. It is famous as the Tin Church, but I prefer to call it St Mary’s. I think the Tin Church makes it sound like a shack.”

An architect has estimated that refurbishment would cost at least £60,000 — and as attendance for the weekly Sunday service seldom tops 25, that sounds like an ambitious fundraising target.

“We need to do it soon,” said Mr Magill. “Building costs rise all the time, and if we leave it much longer it might never happen at all.” The vicar knows much about economic realities — before becoming a priest in 1992, he worked for Barclays Bank.

“I left when the banking industry changed ,” he said. “It always had to make a profit, of course, but the ethos changed so that profit was all that mattered. Banks stopped caring about their own staff, and they became faceless, inhuman organisations to work for.”

It would be a minor tragedy for the community if the Tin Church were to fall into terminal decay. It is used by an over-60s club, the Tin Tots playgroup, youth groups, two art societies, barn dancers and a table tennis club, and it hosts concerts and other events throughout the year.

“There is a unique atmosphere about the church,” Mr Magill said. “When the wind blows and the tin creaks, it sounds as if the roof will only stay on with a wing and a prayer. But it is such a special place. I have loved it and felt at home here since the first day I walked through the door.”

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