Anyone want to buy a chapel?
Gracious Rebel
Shipmate
in Heaven
The Grade II listed Welsh chapel where Cwm Rhondda was first sung is up for sale for just £47,500. The village wants to buy it to stop it being bought by property developers. What would you like to do with it?! https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/race-against-time-save-chapel-32082534
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Incidentally I have visited the grave of the composer of the tune "Cwm Rhondda" at Salem Chapel, Tonteg. https://tinyurl.com/4y9jt2vz
The congregation was peripatetic - they had two more chapels, in nearby villages, and used each one once a month - but eventually the big chapel was demolished. I don't know if the small one is still in use, as even three of the four nearby local Church-in-Wales buildings have closed.
Modest little local fanes may find alternative uses, if the community is able and willing to fund them, as @Baptist Trainfan says, but the bigger chapels must surely be almost impossible to re-use effectively.
Perhaps the locals in the vicinity of the chapel-for-sale should all become Christians, and use it once again for worship?
It was once said of Our Town that it had too many churches, to which the retort was that it had too few Christians...
I have no doubt that this is true. My own county - Kent - was once famous for the fissiparous nature of its chapels!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/583188354145782/?ref=share
£200k and it needs £100k spending on it. We have a year to raise it.
I'm so glad it's not becoming someone's house. (touch wood)
I'm selling prints of this drawing I did to raise funds. Every little helps. 🙂
https://photos.app.goo.gl/PfqoZSA7DfbPiQNL8
One of my favorite hymn melodies
They usually broadcast the whole service later in the year on S4C.
https://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/about-us/departments/property-and-church-buildings/properties-for-sale
Preaching to the choir,
signed
A Church of Scotland treasurer
You need at least two in any settlement - the one you go to and the one you wouldn't be seen dead going to. Ideally a third that you used to go to.
I'm assuming the manses listed there are in towns that are otherwise economically depressed? (Separately the modernist church interests me, presumably at some point that congregation had the money to put up another building before they ended up in financial straits).
(The modernist church I think @chrisstiles refers to is in Cumbernauld. Was it built as part of that New Town development?).
You called?
That's my guess, too.
Interesting, as in general the New Town Development seems to have been very light on 'supporting infrastructure' of that sort.
Most Victorian chapels were built as auditory, rather than ritualistic, spaces, with the emphasis very much on people being able to hear and see the preacher. My last church was wonderful for speaking but curiously poor, acoustically speaking, for instrumental music as there wasn't enough echo. Brass bands however sounded splendid!
So far as I know, those traditions that lean more to “consecration” of the building also have liturgies/procedures for deconsecration, so that the building /property can be used for other purposes, secular purposes.
Our Town has lost a fair few non-C of E chapels in recent years, due to amalgamations, but one or two have been re-purposed. One sad loss (IMHO) was the demolition of a neat little Church of Scotland fane - for many years, it was used as a pre-school nursery, who painted it white, with cheerful primary colours around the pointed Gothic windows, greatly enhancing an otherwise very dull street of terraced houses.
For my own part, I have no problem with former churches or chapels being used for secular purposes, though it's a pity sometimes to lose an attractive or interesting building from the *townscape*.
Our Place, a grandiose Edwardian barn, being far too large for the Sunday congregation of 25 (on a good day), could be converted to low-cost social housing, with perhaps the east end retained for worship, but where would the enormous amount of £££ needed come from?
The original materials - brick, stone, and wood - have been retained or re-used, along with some of the original glass and fittings. Maintenance and heating costs have been reduced, and the buildings are much better fitted for the requirements of today's small congregations.
And iirc this is how it works in France.
True, alas. The C of E examples I mentioned are not Listed, neither are they in Conservation Areas AFAIK.
I'm not sure this is always put into effect though.
I always have something of a pang when I see redundant chapels, even though, as @Baptist Trainfan rightly says, they may never have had the romantic heyday that popular myth would have us believe.
Bethesda Chapel in Hanley (Stoke-on-Trent) is used occasionally for events, but as Shipmates have said, it is hard to convert some of these buildings to alternative use.
https://www.canadianaffairs.news/2025/04/20/a-new-conversion-churches-find-afterlife-as-affordable-housing/
Some of the Manses (the Aberdeen one, for example) are in fairly expensive places, but the Kirk's fire sale has been going for a year or two now so it's possible the most desirable locations have already been snapped up. In some cases it's not deprivation per se but just distance - Wick is out of holiday home and commuter range for the central belt so there isn't the same upward pressure on prices. There's also the fact that cash-strapped congregations will have been getting by on the bare minimum of maintenance and repair so many of the Manses will need a good deal of work.
In terms of the churches some may be in a decent state as finance was not the only criterion - if a newly merged parish is told they can only keep one building it may be chosen based on proximity to centre of population, or being sized correctly for the congregation, or the availability of kitchen facilities.
May I ask why this is?
I overstated the case. There are plenty of instances of former Orthodox church buildings being repurposed in some way, with the hope that the new use remains in keeping with broadly Christian values.
I have come across the idea, though, that just as the consecrated elements should all be consumed and not spilled or thrown away, after communion, so buildings set aside for worship should be 'consumed' once they are no longer required for that purpose.
I don't know of any instances, thinking about it, where disused Orthodox church buildings have been demolished - other than during times of persecution such as the Soviet era.
But then, here in the West many Orthodox parishes don't have their own buildings but rely on the good offices of Anglican or other churches to allow them to use theirs. If an Orthodox parish acquired a listed building, say, then moved elsewhere they obviously wouldn't demolish the building after they'd left as they wouldn't be able to do do legally, even if they wanted to.
However, another faith probably won’t meet the criteria.
We have a disused RC 20thC church not far from us. It has been empty for at least ten years, but because it is listed it cannot be altered without a lengthy process to gain permission. So it stands empty.
The slightest whisper of a building repurposed as a mosque around here gets the usual suspects very hot under the collar and nasty.
Though it's not uncommon to have a charitable aim of "advancement of religion" which I suppose, at least from the legal point of view, is pursued by a Mosque as much as by a Church.
One of our chapels up north became a mosque. I was pleased as it is still a vibrant centre of the community as it once was. The community has changed but the building is being well used.
I don't like them becoming warehouses or someone's fancy home.
A Church in Manchester has become a cafe and climbing centre - it's great. My sons climbed there when they were at university.
https://www.visitmanchester.com/listing/manchester-climbing-centre/32684101/
It's a splendid tune!
At least one group within the wider Anglican Church deliberately builds to last only a couple of decades ("We don't want run-ins with the heritage nutters" in their words).
In one Orthodox church where I was involved in the purchase of a building from the Methodists there was one restrictive covenant from the original land owner who had sold the land thirty years earlier, and an attempt to insert a further restrctive covenant by the Methodists. A waiver to the first was obtained without problem and the second was heavily modified by negotiation.