Many a churchgoer will be familiar with the long wait for a comfort break during a service in a church with no convenient facilities.

But it seems younger worshippers are less willing to hang on.

And one vicar's efforts to attract more of them to services by installing a convenient loo has been opposed by his parishioners as "undignified".

Plans to install unisex toilets as part of a refurbishment of St Mary the Virgin in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, met with ire from opponents who said that toilets in churches were a "current fad".

Currently those in need must travel 30 metres to a nearby building which is not accessible to disabled people, said Alicia Collinson, deputy chancellor of the diocese of Gloucester in a court judgment.