They were once at the heart of almost every community across Britain, with their stunning architecture a great reminder of this country’s rich tapestry of history.
But more than 3,500 churches have shut across the UK over the past decade, with many now crumbling wrecks which can no longer be saved and face demolition.
With church attendance having plummeted in recent decades and the repair bills simply too high, some of these beautiful buildings are simply locked up and unused.
However, while their alarming decline paints a bleak picture for those who still view Britain as a Christian country, many churches are instead getting a new lease of life.
They are being transformed for another use, such as becoming homes, community centres, libraries, museums, arts centres, theatres, offices, pubs or even nightclubs.
And in a reflection of the country’s shifting religious make-up with Christianity on the decline and Islam on the rise, some churches are even being turned into mosques.
Other developers are also stepping in to save the buildings, while vicars desperate to keep churches open are attempting to turn them into multi-use community facilities.
The Church of England owns more than 16,000 church buildings, but 12,500 of these are listed – and account for nearly half of the Grade I-listed buildings in the country.
Places of worship on the Heritage At Risk Register in England are shown split by constituency
Search your local authority district above in this ONS map to see the area’s religious make-up
An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 parish churches across the country are either closed or used intermittently without a resident vicar – while the repair backlog for the CofE’s churches alone is at least £1billion, according to the National Churches Trust.
The situation has not been helped by former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who quit last November over an abuse scandal, overseeing a historic decline in the size of the CofE while in office as the number of congregants fell by 25,000 a year.
Sunday church attendance has dropped from 788,000 to 557,000 since 2013, with vicars struggling to rebuild CofE attendance on Sundays after the Covid pandemic when many churches were forced to switch to online-only services.
Government census data from 2021 showed Christians were in a minority in England and Wales for first time.
Some 46 per cent of the population or 27.5million people described themselves as ‘Christian’, which was down from 59 per cent or 33.3million in 2021.
The same data showed that the number of Muslims rose to 3.9million or 6.5 per cent of the population in 2021, up from 2.7million or 4.9 per cent in 2011.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics also found ‘no religion’ was the second most common response in the census, increasing to 22.2million or 37.2 per cent in 2021, up from 14.1million or 25.2 per cent in 2011.
But while churches are closing, many are being repurposed to remain a community meeting point – whether that is as a restaurant, pub or other use.
One of the most interesting changes of use seen at churches in England is the food market chain Mercato Metropolitano’s site inside St Mark’s in Mayfair, a former Grade I-listed church.
The building with a stunning Romanesque exterior underwent a £5million renovation after being deconsecrated, and retains many of its original features such as tombs and artwork among the food stalls.
Others have been turned into pubs and nightclubs – such as The Duke and Rye in Chichester, which is opposite the West Sussex city’s cathedral.
Punters now get to drink in the mid-Victorian gothic-style building which is the former 19th century Church of St Peter the Great, deconsecrated in 1982.
Another unusual conversion is the Halo Nightclub in Bournemouth, which was established at the site of the former St Andrew’s Church in 2013.
The Grade-II listed former United Reformed Church had a £500,000 refurbishment in 2020 and features a motorised lighting rig that descends from the ceiling.
While the business ran into financial difficulties and closed in March last year, it is now set to reopen in May under new ownership with a new name – Sanctum.
In North East London, a chapel that was once part of the Clayburn Asylum psychiatric hospital when it opened in 1892 has since been converted into a 24m swimming pool.
Swimmers at the Virgin Active facility Repton Park can look at the stunning gothic arches and stained-glass windows at the facility which also includes a sauna and gym.
Elsewhere in the capital, Asylum Chapel in Peckham is a former chapel at what was home for retired pub landlords which opened in 1827 but was bombed during the Second World War.
By 2010 it was being used as a space for art projects, exhibitions, theatre productions and shoots – and it is now a creative project space with a wedding licence.
In Salisbury, the Chapel Nightclub is a former 19th Century Pentecostal church which opened in 1897 before being renovated in 1997 when the church closed.
The award-winning venue has four separate rooms – The Vestry, the Soul Room, the Chapel and the Courtyard – and features a light-up dance floor.
Meanwhile the Unitarian Chapel on High Pavement in Nottingham opened in 1876 but has in more recent years been a Pitcher & Piano bar after its conversion in 1998.
The Grade II-listed venue, which previously housed the Nottingham Lace Museum in the 1980s, retains stained glass windows and exposed brick archways.
In South Yorkshire, the former St George’s Church was taken on by the University of Sheffield after being closed in 1981.
The Grade II-list building, which was consecrated in 1825, is now home to lecture space and student accommodation.
Another impressive property conversion is Holy Trinity Church in Reading, a Grade II-listed building constructed in 1850 which was turned into a luxurious home in 2017.
The Grade II-listed St Laurence’s Church in Darlington, built in 1871, was also converted into a seven-bedroom home and features the original stone spire.
Elsewhere, Missionworks in Hammersmith, West London, is a shared workspace that was originally built in 1884 as a church hall for the nearby St John the Evangelist Church.
The Grade II-listed building has also previously operated as a school, kitchen, workers’ club and studio to the scenic designer John Campbell who painted sets for shows.
Other churches are even being turned into mosques – with the latest example covered by being one in Watford which was recently bought by a Muslim organisation for £3.5million.
St Thomas’ United Reformed Church closed in 2015 with the initial plan to demolish and rebuild it because of serious structural issues.
Planning permission was granted twice but the scheme was never taken forward and it was put up for sale then purchased by the local Ar-Rahmah Trust last December.
Now, the charity is trying to raise a further £1.5million to renovate the 20,000 sq ft building to reopen it as Masjid Al-Ummah next year ‘with facilities like never before’.
It comes after the Church of England intervened to block a disused Grade II-listed church in Staffordshire from being transformed into a mosque in August last year.
The St John the Evangelist church in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, had not been used as a place of worship since the tower was declared unsafe in the 1980s.
The building, which dates back to 1788, was being last used as an antiques centre and café before being sold onto the Zamir Foundation which won permission from Stoke-on-Trent City Council to turn it into a mosque.
But the Church of England blocked the plan using a legal clause under a covenant that prohibits it becoming a place of worship for another religion.
Other transformations have however been passed, such as a disused Victorian Methodist church in Bradford which is set to be converted into a mosque.
Clayton Heights Methodist Church dates back to 1870 but has been vacant since 2020 – with plans to turn it into homes never carried out, and the church instead bought by the local Muslim community.
Elsewhere, the dilapidated former St Chad’s Church in Blackburn, Lancashire, was transformed into the new Masjid-e-Taqwa mosque following a major renovation in 2023.
The National Churches Trust has stated that 3,500 churches have closed in the UK in the last ten years, while the Church of Scotland is actively planning the closure of 30 to 40 per cent of its churches.
The charity adds that about a quarter of historic churches and chapels in Wales have closed in recent years, while in England over 900 churches are on the Historic England Heritage At Risk Register.
The areas considered by the National Churches Trust as the ‘danger zones’ which contain the largest numbers of historic churches on the At Risk Register are Lincolnshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Devon, Cornwall, inner and central London, parts of Manchester and the East Midlands.
A survey by the charity in July last year found in-person church attendance can fall by almost a third if a local church closes.
The poll, which interviewed 2,667 UK adult Christians online, asked ‘What would you do if your local church building closed?’.
Just under a quarter (22 per cent) of church-going Christians say they would no longer attend church services at all, while a further 7 per cent say they would attend services only online. The same proportion (7 per cent) said they would attend services less often than at present.
Older people are most likely to stop going to church at all, with only 19 per cent of those over 65 saying they would find a new church to attend as often as they do currently, if their local church were to close.
Churchgoers in the North East (30 per cent) and North West (31 per cent) of England were the most likely to stop going to church at all whilst those in London were least likely to stop going to church at all (14 per cent).
The CofE states that about 20 churches are closed for worship each year, and has a regularly-updated list on its website of those which are available for sale or lease for a suitable list.
Current examples include the Church of St James in Burrington, a Grade II-listed building on the market for £160,000 on the Herefordshire-Shropshire border which dates back to the 13th century and was built in its current form 1864.
The remote church, which is three miles away from the nearest village, is in the early English style with lancet windows and plate tracery – with the building also featuring 17th century ledger slabs and a Norman-style round arched head on the doorway.
Also on the list is the former Church of St Leonard in St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex, which was built in 1953 to replace a previous 1834 church destroyed during the Second World War, which is on the market for £500,000.
Others include the Grade II*-listed St Paul’s in Boughton, Chester, for £100,000; Carlisle Holy Trinity in Cumbria for £250,000; and Church Kirk St James in Blackburn, Lancashire, for £75,000.
Sir Philip Rutnam, chairman of the National Churches Trust, told : ‘The future of church buildings is the biggest heritage challenge facing the UK and the changes to the Listed Places of Worship Grants Scheme by the Government have only exacerbated this.
‘Many of our church buildings are in a perilous state and are struggling to keep their doors open. It is local people who have to find the money, and now they’re having to find even more to pay for VAT on top of the urgent repair costs to fix crumbling towers and leaking roofs.
‘These wonderful buildings are not just loved for their heritage, but they are often the only public building in the area and to lose them would be deeply felt in communities in every corner of the UK.’
‘The Government needs to bring together Christian denominations and the tourism and heritage sectors and come up with a national plan for how we can protect these buildings, so we can keep them open for future generations to use and enjoy, or else we risk losing them for good.’