Should Britain’s abandoned church buildings be saved?

Should Britain’s abandoned church buildings be saved?

Around 100 Church buildings close across the country each year just keeping the roof on and the cold out it’s astonishing how much money that costs But A revolution is underway to save them our aim is to rescue and repair redundant disused places of worship all across England and Wales from church

Ruins to art studios food markets and nightclubs I want to find out what’s happening to Britain’s abandoned church buildings and should they be saved so welcome to St Lawrence’s church built on the site of Three Holy whales lies St Lawrence’s Church in G freston Wales its medieval Stone

Structure partially hidden in a wooded Valley was being slowly reclaimed by the wild it first came to my attention in 2019 the church was still open and still still in use actually so it still had Services even though it was completely cloaked in Ivy and the slates were

Flying off the roof and the pews they were covered in kind of rot and mold Rachel’s charity friends of friendless churches did a condition survey they found 15th century wall paintings hidden in the walls it would cost 600,000 to restore the church money the small charity did not have BOS I just

Knew it was special you know I knew it was a place that I couldn’t let just fall into ruin and that was that was the only other option for this church for four years she applied for Grants and finally received one to help restore the church this year is it a thankless task

No because this building that we’re sitting in it’s been here since at least the 13th century it’s been in this state for you know a decade or so that’s like a blip in its lifetime so I always think you know we’re doing it for people in the future there’s always just that hope

That somebody will come and thank you for what you’ve done even if it’s 50 100 years in the future and that’s exactly what happened in 1992 when stained glass artist Benjamin Finn discovered what look like an abandoned church on the outskirts of Wick and Bishops in essic at that point

There were no windows in the Nave so you could actually just climb up and clamber down into the church so I just came down and had a little look the 12th century church had been declared redundant Back in 1970 but in 1975 friends of friendless churches took it over and

Partly restored it Benjamin approached the charity and a deal was struck he’s now been working at St Peters for nearly three decades I found the space inspiring it harks back to the to the Medieval Era when stained glass originated and flourished you know it made me part of the history of stained glass

Itself but churches used to be Community spaces Central to any Village in the UK the Duke of Ryan chitester has ensured it stays that way the Gothic Revival church was built in 1852 and has been continually converted to suit its community’s needs it was consecrated

About 50 years ago now but then in the early ’90s it reopened as an indoor market and in ’98 it was basically turned into a pub it was quite a scene it was open a lot later than it is now it was more of a nightclub so there was

A little bit of backlash there the church is now pub and restaurant because this building otherwise probably would have crumbled by now if it wasn’t taken over privately and I think it’s brilliant that they’ completely respected the original structure you’re a church goer how do you feel about church

Conversions it always makes me feel slightly uncomfortable but I’ve never quite worked out whether that’s a just a a personal reaction of mine or whether there’s some principle involved Nile G is a writer commentator and Christian he believes we can’t save all Church buildings and that sometimes we should

Bring the bulldozers in this is such an old country there’s so much around that’s old and attractive but you you just can’t keep it all because it just restricts you know more development of housing that’s needed and I think possibly even it does contribute to a

Sort of sense of Britain as a theme park of of the olden days rather than than thinking about well what’s best for for people now I put all this to the bishop of ramsbury who is in charge of church and Cathedral buildings for the Church of England why preserve a church

Building that’s been around for hundreds of years but is crumbling down and really expensive to uphold when you could create a new building that’s much cheaper purpose-built and ready for that Community because we are people who need to know our story these extraordinary kind of storehouses of local memory are

Uh are on everybody’s doorstep we have nearly 16,000 Parish churches many of them uh 8 900,000 years old all telling the story of that local place and I think that being a being a Christian country is not it’s not just a a description of the present it’s an inheritance from the

Past and so uh in order to know our future and to tell a better story about the future we’ve got to to retain a way of telling the story about who we’ve been in the past but are we really a Christian country for the first time

Ever in a sensus less than half the population of England and Wales describe themselves as Christian data from the brewery consultancy shows this decline in religious congregations only really began in the 1970s in 1960 there were 53,000 ,200 Church congregations in the UK the number fell to 45,500 in

2020 St Marks in central London was one of the victims of the 70s the church in Mayfair had hosted presidents and Kings but after the second world war its local population dwindled and it was deconsecrated by the church of England in 1974 the grade one listed building spent

30 years on historic England’s Heritage at risk register but in 2008 18 underwent A5 million revamp spread across four floors and with bouncers at its doors the church is now a food market called Mao metropolitano Mayfair does it ever feel a bit weird serving food on an altar or wine on an altar

What is the main purpose of a church for me was sharing bread and water and then my Jesus decided to turn into wine which was a great idea for me and that’s what we are doing here and was there any backlash at the time you know you’re

Converting the church that had was at the time deconsecrated but it was still a church not at all us being Italian we went to talk to the church directly in Italy and they told us that once the church is deconsecrated is not a church anymore you can do whatever you want so

People who feel some uh urge to go against us in this is people who do not know their religion very well wow look at all this new scaling I know it’s good isn’t it Restorations are now fully underway at St Lawrence’s Church who was standing in exactly the place

That I interview you last time yeah I think so but now it’s bright yeah there are no rotting pews how does it feel finally seeing the Restorations underway oh it feels it really does feel amazing I mean um I thought we would really never never get to this stage it’s taken

A long long time and all of the pews have been taken to be fumigated all the wall paintings are protected so yeah big uh big changes and you said with this church you did a condition survey it was way too expensive but you said there’s something special about this church I

Want to save this church and now you’ve been successful how does that feel um oh gosh I actually have gobs as as you sort of said that um to get to this point it was hard year after year went by and we still there’s still no solution and I

Just felt that this had to be compress here what do you see as the future of this building so we’ll have a worshiping function it will be open every single day so people can come it can be a place for private worship people just to visit

And kind of to see how cool and ancient it is I’ve worked on lots of listed buildings historic buildings um but churches are the place where I’ve really kind of found the most moving um and in some ways the most desperate cases really and that’s why I really want to

Help them they are the spiritual investment of generations of people they are a community’s greatest expression of itself over centuries and it’s ours and it’s still here and that’s incredible and that you can just drive to any Village really or town or city and there will be a church it will probably be

Open and you can go in and you can experience all of that I find that really special um and something that should be protected

Have you visited a church this Christmas?

The Brierley Consultancy estimates that around 6,000 church buildings have closed across the country in the last 60 years. That’s a hundred churches closing a year.

But what happens to a church building once it’s no longer places of worship? Are abandoned church buildings worth saving – or, as some experts suggest, should we bring the bulldozers in?

Saskia Lumley reports.

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