THE interior of a church is something many of us experience only at Christmas.
Forty three per cent of Britons attend church on December 25, but regular
Sunday worship is, for most, no longer a social and moral imperative. One
problem this causes the clergy is: what to do with all the half-empty,
crumbling buildings? The Church of England alone maintains 45 per cent of
the country's Grade I listed buildings and faces a repair bill of £378
million.
The inevitable answer is that many churches are sold to private developers for
conversion into swanky flats. One development company, the Manhattan Loft
Corporation (MLC), has pioneered a mutually beneficial arrangement by
agreeing to preserve part of each church it converts as a “worship space”.
Its latest project is Honor Oak Church in Forest Hill, southeast London. A
grand, red-brick, Neo-Gothic edifice built in 1891, complete with bell tower
and rose and trefoil windows, it was abandoned by its Baptist congregation
in favour of the less-draughty church hall. Now a deal has been struck with
MLC to convert the 15,500 sq ft building into ten flats and a worship space.
There will be six 564 sq ft one-beds priced from £285,000, two 1,287sq ft
duplex two-beds at £580,000 and two 1,140 sq ft triplex three-beds at
£495,000, plus four townhouses in the church hall.
“Converted churches are more common now because property values are so high
that the Church can make a lot of money from selling,” explains Fiona
Charlesworth, of MLC. “We have a worship space in all our church
conversions. The congregation here are delighted to be getting their church
back.”
Harry Handelsman, MLC's chief executive, adds: “Converting a church presents
enormous structural challenges because the building was made as a house of
prayer, not an apartment block.” Honor Oak Church will not look like a
church inside. The design is relentlessly contemporary and the tall glass
windows along each side will be cut in half by a new floor. This doesn't
seem to bother potential buyers, however, who are more concerned about sound
insulation, lest their Sunday mornings be disturbed by the hymns of the
faithful below.
Another church conversion that manages to avoid spoiling the stained glass is
Bristol's former Catholic cathedral, now known as Cathedral Apartments. The
only cathedral in the country to be converted into residential
accommodation, it was built in 1848 but its precarious site on the edge of a
quarry required such drastic maintenance that the Church decamped and
deconsecrated it in 1973. After spending 25 years as a school, the
Italianate building was left empty until a local development company, Urban
Creation, bought it for £2.1 million in 2005. “It was very depressing,” says
Darren Sherward, of Urban Creation. “All graffiti and bird-droppings - we
had to wear masks.”
The nave is to become 38 one and two-bedroom duplex flats, but they will be
built only in the centre, leaving the side aisles free as full-height
glass-roofed walkways, “in order to retain a sense of volume,” Sherward
says. “We are keeping the integrity of the original building - adding a
layer of history to it as part of its evolution.” A further 42 new flats,
including three affordable units, will be built at the back of the
cathedral. Prices range from £168,000 for a 348sq ft studio to £510,000 for
a 1,413 sq ft three-bedroom duplex. The first 20 flats to be released via
Savills sold out on the launch day in October. As with Honor Oak Church,
there are lots of local buyers keen to own a bit of a neighbouring landmark.
“Lots of people who married here are interested,” says Sheward. “One buyer,
a solicitor, was a chorister here.”
Not all former churches need end up as minimalist executive crash-pads. The
owner of one Hertfordshire church has taken a radically different approach.
Carmen Redondo, a quality controller for Jaeger, spotted an advert in a
local paper for the parish church of St John in the village of Letty Green,
and bought it with her parents for £650,000 in 2004. Built in 1843 and Grade
II listed, the church was semi-derelict. “It had subsidence, dry and wet
rot, no heating, no drainage and squatters,” Redondo says. After she spent
more than £1million on the project, including pouring 230 tonnes of concrete
into the foundations, the church is now an extraordinary four-bedroom house.
A confessional box confronts you as you walk through the front door. It
turns out to be a lavatory. A vast, echoing sitting/dining room occupies
half the original nave, with a pulpit in the corner, a vaulted ceiling,
stained glass, crucifixes, ornate Gothic chairs and a spot-lit cherub on a
pedestal. A huge antique mirror over the fireplace lifts to reveal a
television nestled in a non-ecclesiastical niche. If all this wasn't enough
to bring on lashings of Catholic guilt, one bed has “This do in remembrance
of me” carved into the headboard.
It's all rather fabulous, and the builder, Trevor Hyatt, of Linley
Developments, won a prize for it at the Master Builder of the Year Awards.
“Normally church conversions are contemporary inside,” he says, “which is
cheap, but very cold. We wanted it to be informal and warm.” Redondo adds,
“We just loved the sense of history and calm. If there had been graves
outside or we'd found bodies under the floor we might have felt differently,
but luckily there was nothing like that.”
Taking up residence in a house of God is an unconventional choice, clearly.
Despite this, says Fiona Charlesworth, “some sort of magic makes people
buy.” Her colleague Harry Handelsman adds: “I do understand that feeling of
‘should I really be having a bath in a holy place?' But there's something
about a church that makes you feel special. And if we weren't developing
these churches, they would become derelict. We're saving them for the
future.”
www.manhattanloft.co.uk
cathedralapartments.co.uk
linleydevelopments.co.uk
