Converting a Ruined Chapel

The Chapel had rather a chequered history before David and Valerie bought it. In 1998 it was sold for conversion to commercial use, refused planning and then sold to an American couple, who began converting it into their home. While working at roof level one of the owners fell, seriously injuring his back. It was the final straw in a series of mishaps, and so he asked David – a builder, who was working on the project at the time – if he knew anyone who would take it off his hands.

David and Valerie had just sold their house and were looking for a plot in the area on which to self-build — the Chapel seemed to offer an ideal, albeit unexpected, opportunity to David. Valerie wasn’t quite so impressed on first viewing: “It was like looking into a black hole,” she recalls. Although partly stripped out, there had been fire damage and it had suffered from years of neglect.

However, with a shortage of affordable plots in the area at the time, it didn’t take long to convince Valerie — and so in June 2003 the couple bought the Chapel.

A period of inactivity on site followed. “I had such a lot of work coming in,” remembers David, “I just didn’t have extra time to spend on the Chapel too.” This provided the couple with breathing space to pull their design ideas together.

The inherited design was adapted to suit their lifestyle and needs. The existing footprint area was too small for them, so they added an entrance hall and utility room on the side and a conservatory discreetly tucked away at the rear of the Chapel.

Valerie had a firm idea of what she wanted from the interior space, particularly in the kitchen: “I wanted a hand-painted kitchen with a granite worktop. I had it all in my head, I knew what I wanted — it was just a matter of designing and building it.”

Meanwhile David puzzled on how it was all going to work. “I knew the stairs had to be in the middle of the house to allow us to make use of the existing windows for natural daylight and ventilation to the bedrooms,” he says. “The final location of the stairs off the dining hall was not ideal, as to get anywhere in the house you have to pass through there, but it solved the problem for the upstairs rooms.”

In addition to work pressures, David found it time consuming putting together a team of trades. Although he has plenty of contacts – finding a good stonemason was a top priority – availability was a problem. By August the pressure stepped up — the family who owned the couple’s rental property decided to return in December, giving them less than five months to make the Chapel habitable. Work started in earnest later that month.

From August to December there were as many as 19 people working on site at any one time — all people David knew from past experience. “I also supplied materials to order. This saved a fortune on wastage in both materials and time,” he says.

Retaining the Chapel’s character was important.  Plastering internally – instead of dry-lining – kept the shape and slight irregularity of the building. David supervised the raking out of the stone joints to receive the render coat, but the stonework on either side of the fireplace has been left exposed as a link to the original building.

The original roof slates were reused — taken off and re-laid. Insulation in the roof was installed to modern standards — keeping the bedrooms really warm despite the high ceilings, left open to show the timbers of the original cut and pegged roof.

The window positions in the existing walls were fixed, but the cill heights were too high to bring enough light into the living areas. These were carefully removed, the window openings enlarged or lowered, and the cills replaced at a lower level with new windows installed.

On-site decision making and changes were handled immediately by David, keeping progress smooth and eliminating any major problems.

“We know building on a greenfield plot would have been easier and cheaper, but it wasn’t an option at the time,” David concludes. “Doing it this way, you had to be in it to appreciate how it was developing — it was well worth it and we’d definitely do it again.”

Further reading:

• Converting a Chapel
• Converting a Church
• Everything you need to know about conversions