Bowing to pressure from the Anglican Church, a nursery school owner claims she has been forced to close down her operation after just one year.

Sabrina Kirby, who runs Woodlands Playhouse Nursery and Preschool from the hall of Christ Church in Devonshire, yesterday told The Royal Gazette that rather than face a court battle over leaving the premises, she has decided to end the business.

Parents of 30 young children aged one to four years, will be affected by the closure along with four staff.

"We will try as far as possible to accommodate the children and staff at our Woodlands Road location,'' Mrs. Kirby said.

The facility at Woodlands Road was expanded last November with the addition of two classrooms, five toilets for the children and a staff bathroom.

Mrs. Kirby said the church served her with a "threatening'' letter in late July which demanded she vacate the building by September 1 or go to court.

"Rather than have the church go through with legal action, I have decided to end the business,'' she said.

The church had previously asked Mrs. Kirby to be out of the building by the end of April, but had not enforced their request as she was having a difficult time finding another suitable site.

"We gave her ample notice that we wanted the building back but she kept coming to us at the eleventh hour and asking for an extension,'' Canon James Francis said yesterday.

"We decided it is far better not to keep extending the time on and on. I don't think we're being unreasonable,'' he continued. "It really all centres around her (Mrs. Kirby) not being able to share the facility as we had originally agreed.'' But Mrs. Kirby pointed out that she only began the business at the suggestion of Canon Francis who had called and offered to rent her the church hall.

According to Mrs. Kirby, since starting the nursery school last September, she and Canon Francis have locked horns on a few occasions. She said she had reported a list of concerns to him and offered to have them fixed. But she was turned down by the parish vestry.

"They said they didn't want to fix anything out of fear that we would not want to leave,'' she said. But Canon Francis said the vestry fixed the roof and put up fencing at the request of the school.

"We recognised we had some responsibility,'' he said. "We wanted children in there and that's why the rent was so low.'' he explained. "We only charged them $1,500 a month and we could have gotten $2,000 or more easily but money was not our goal.

"It's unfortunate that she couldn't live up to that part of the agreement to share the facility with us.'' It is not the first time Canon Francis has pointed out the problem. At the end of May tempers flared over the school closing for a day to allow the church to hold its annual general meeting and dinner. Church member and area MP John Barritt had staved off a likely confrontation in allowing the school to open and simply close by 4 p.m.

In that incident Mrs. Kirby had claimed it was unreasonable for the church to expect her to relocate or close whenever they wanted.

And Canon Francis held that Mrs. Kirby had been given ample notice of the meeting and that their arrangement was to be one of sharing the church hall.

"Our agreement was that if and when the church needs the hall, they would make it available to us.'' he said. "The present occupant takes up so much of the church hall, we thought it would be more of a sharing, it's not a school hall.'' But Mrs. Kirby said the latest move to close the school has angered many parents.

"We had a PTA meeting last (Monday) night and many of the parents were upset with the church,'' she said. "One woman who is a member of Christ Church told us that the church don't even need the hall and that they only use it for Sunday school classes.''