How living in a converted church can be divinely attractive

Between 1559 and 1791 it was against the law not to go to church on a Sunday, but today, only two per cent of people in Britain attend.

Since 1969, nearly 2,000 churches have been closed by the Church of England alone, with many more from other denominations joining them among the ranks of the permanently shut.

What’s more, the trend has been accelerated by the Covid lockdowns. It was reported last year that more than 350 C of E churches are earmarked for closure in the next two to five years – a rate of closure eight times faster than before the pandemic.

All of which means there is a national glut of disused buildings coming to market that are mostly old, beautiful and big.

The trend for converting churches into residential properties has been gathering pace for decades, but the process itself is no easy matter. Sure, they provide plenty of space to work with, but it tends to lack any of the internal structure needed in a home.

Those lofty naves look fabulous – but how do you incorporate them into a family home? Altars and fonts are fine, but what do you actually do with them once they are part of your living space?

And once you put in an extra floor those tall windows get split in two, which can spoil the aesthetic. Some are even surrounded by graveyards, which must take some getting used to.

These challenges mean that church conversions meet with varying degrees of success, but the following three all work well and are all currently for sale in our area.

In Ripon, 17 Wilkinson Court is a mid-terrace house in a converted chapel in the grounds of the former Ripon College, a teacher training college that became part of the College of Ripon and York St John and closed in 2001. The chapel was dedicated in 1899 and named after Saint Margaret of Scotland, who married Malcolm III and became Queen of Scotland in 1070.

The three-storey house has two bedrooms, a shower room, and an open-plan kitchen and living room on the middle floor. Outside, there’s an allocated parking space, plus visitor parking.

In Harrogate, 9 St Luke’s Court is one of 29 flats in what used to be the 850-seat St Luke’s Church on Kings Road. The Gothic church was built in 1897 at what used to be called Smithy Hill, for a cost of £8,000, but closed in 1980 and was converted soon after.

The ground-floor flat has one bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen and large dining/living room. There is also a communal laundry room, plus communal gardens and residents’ parking.

Finally, in Thorner, south of Wetherby, 9 Kirklands is one of several apartments in the village’s former Methodist church, which was built in 1878 at a cost of £5,200 by Leeds architect George Francis Danby, who designed several local Gothic churches. The upper-floor duplex flat has one bedroom, a bathroom, dining kitchen and lounge, and outside there is parking and large communal gardens.