Closed churches for sale
Every Church of England building currently offered for disposal by the Church Commissioners, with the diocese, the listing grade, the agent and the price where one is stated.
Around twenty Church of England churches close for worship each year. Once a church is closed the Church Commissioners offer the building for sale or lease for a suitable use, and the list below is that list: the buildings on the market on 8 September 2026, as published on the Church of England's closed church buildings page. Some may already be under offer; where the Commissioners say so, the card says so.
How a purchase works. Closure and disposal are governed by the Mission and Pastoral Measure 2011. The sale completes only when the Commissioners have made a Pastoral (Church Buildings Disposal) Scheme for the building, and most sales carry restrictive covenants on future use. Expressions of interest go to the agent named on each building and are expected to state the proposed use, the financial offer, any alterations proposed to the building, and proof of funds for the purchase and for the works. Most of these buildings sit in use class F1 (learning and non residential institutions) under the Use Classes Order 1987; a change to housing or another use needs planning permission, and for the many listed buildings here, listed building consent under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. For Grade II* and Grade I buildings the Commissioners recommend early advice from Historic England and the council's conservation team. Churchyards with burials are often excluded from the sale, with rights of access reserved. Ask Sorrel about any of them: she has the record of every building on this page.
Source: Church of England, closed church buildings available for disposal, read 8 September 2026. Each building has its own page with the full published particulars, its history where the record holds one, and photographs. Photographs are by the named photographers under Creative Commons licences via Wikimedia Commons, or, where marked, illustrative. Homebinding has not inspected these buildings.
Buying a church, chapel or meeting house
Churches come to the market for one reason above all others: the congregation has gone, or merged, and the building costs more to keep than the people left can raise. What follows is not an ordinary sale. A church is normally listed, often the oldest structure in the parish, frequently standing in a burial ground, and always held under a legal structure designed to protect it rather than trade it. Thousands have been converted, but the route runs through church law as well as planning law, and the sequence matters.
The first question is which body owns it, because each denomination disposes of buildings in its own way. The second is what state the building is in and what the council will accept as a new use. The third is what lies under the ground. This is not advice, and a church purchase needs a solicitor familiar with ecclesiastical title and a surveyor experienced with historic fabric.
Closed churches and the pastoral process
A Church of England parish church cannot simply be put up for sale. It must first be closed for regular public worship by a scheme made under the Mission and Pastoral Measure 2011, which governs the reorganisation of parishes and the future of their buildings. The process begins in the diocese, with the mission and pastoral committee consulting the parochial church council, the incumbent, the patron and the local authority, and drawing up a draft scheme. Representations can be made, and objections considered by the Church Commissioners or referred onward.
Once closed, responsibility for the building's future passes to the Church Commissioners, whose closed churches team works with the diocese to find a suitable new use. The Commissioners must have regard to the character of the building and its setting, and there is a settled order of preference: continued worship by another Christian body, then some other suitable use, then vesting in a preservation trust such as the Churches Conservation Trust, with demolition the last resort and rarely available for a listed building. Accepted uses have included houses and flats, offices and studios, community and arts venues, climbing centres, shops, nurseries and libraries. Uses judged unsuitable are refused, and the disposal is completed by a further scheme rather than a simple contract. For a buyer that means a longer timetable than a commercial purchase: terms are agreed, the scheme is published, then it takes effect, and deposits, exclusivity and survey costs have to be planned around that sequence.
Chapels, meeting houses and Scotland
Methodist chapels
Methodist property in Britain is held on model trusts, with the Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes acting as custodian trustee and the local church council and circuit meeting taking the decisions. A sale requires the consent of the circuit and district and must follow the Church's own standing orders, including obtaining a proper valuation and, in many cases, marketing the building openly. Methodist chapels close in larger numbers than Anglican churches and are often the most straightforward church buildings to buy, being frequently nineteenth century, structurally simple, unencumbered by a churchyard and sometimes unlisted.
Baptist, United Reformed and independent
Baptist churches are usually held by trustees, often with a union or trust corporation involved. United Reformed churches are held through provincial trust bodies, Quaker meeting houses through area meetings. Independent chapels may be in private hands already. In every case the buyer's solicitor needs the trust deed and confirmation that the people signing have power to sell.
Church of Scotland
Scottish congregational property is generally held by the Church of Scotland General Trustees, and disposals in recent years have followed presbytery mission planning, under which each presbytery decides which buildings are to be retained for the long term. Buildings not retained are released for sale, and the volume of church buildings coming to the Scottish market has been substantial as a result. Scottish listed building consent and planning permission are dealt with under the separate Scottish statutes, and burial ground law in Scotland differs from that in England and Wales, so local advice is essential.
Catholic and other
Roman Catholic churches are held within diocesan trusts and, where a church has been consecrated, canon law procedures precede any sale. The pattern is consistent: a church is rarely owned by the people who worship in it, and consent has to come from a body above them.
Ecclesiastical exemption, listing and change of use
Most churches in use are listed, and while a building is used by a denomination operating its own approved system of control, the ecclesiastical exemption applies. In broad terms, listed building consent from the council is not required, because the denomination's own consent system takes its place: the faculty jurisdiction of the consistory courts for the Church of England, and equivalent committees for the Methodist, Roman Catholic, United Reformed and Baptist churches, within the terms of the exemption order Parliament has made. The exemption has never covered everything, and it has never disapplied planning permission, scheduled monument consent or conservation area rules.
The point that matters to a buyer is that the exemption depends on the building being in use for worship by an exempt body. Once a church is closed and sold out of denominational hands, the exemption falls away and the building becomes an ordinary listed building. From that moment listed building consent under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 is needed for any works affecting its special interest, inside and out, and the local conservation officer and, for higher grade buildings, Historic England or its Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish counterparts become the people you must satisfy.
Change of use needs planning permission in its own right under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Places of worship sit in class F1 of the England use classes order, and conversion to houses or flats is a material change of use decided on its merits, with parking, amenity and neighbour impact joined by heritage considerations. Both consents are needed and they run in parallel. A realistic scheme, drawn by an architect who has done one before, is worth more than an optimistic one, because the interventions that make a church habitable, inserting floors, subdividing the nave, cutting openings, adding insulation and heating, and dealing with stained glass, are the ones heritage officers scrutinise hardest.
Burials, bats, bells and monuments
A churchyard is not a garden. Ground used for burial carries its own law, controlled separately from planning. Where the ground is consecrated and remains within the faculty jurisdiction, a faculty from the consistory court is normally required before remains are moved. Where it is not, removal of human remains generally requires a licence from the Ministry of Justice, and separate rules restrict building on disused burial grounds and impose conditions on the treatment and reinterment of remains. All of this is slow, expensive and emotionally charged, and an archaeological watching brief is usually a condition of consent. If your scheme touches the ground outside the walls, price it properly or design around it.
Bats are the other buried cost. Churches are among the most important roosting sites in the country, and all bat species and their roosts are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and the habitats regulations. Protection attaches to the roost whether or not bats are present. Works affecting a roost need a licence from Natural England, NatureScot, Natural Resources Wales or the Northern Ireland authorities, granted only where the statutory tests are met, and a survey in the right season is a normal early expense. Nesting birds, owls and swifts raise similar issues.
Bells, organs, fonts, pulpits, stained glass, brasses and memorials are dealt with in the closure scheme rather than left to chance, and items of value are often removed and rehoused before a sale. Monuments can remain the property of the family that erected them, and war memorials attract particular protection and public feeling. Ask early what is going and what is staying, and get it in writing.
Covenants are the last of these hidden terms. Church vendors commonly impose restrictive covenants on sale, limiting the future use of the building, prohibiting uses regarded as incompatible with its former sacred character, controlling signage and advertising and sometimes reserving rights of access to graves. Read them before you buy, because they bind successors and may be harder to remove than a planning condition.
Conversion, cost and lending
The physical work follows a familiar order. Survey properly first: a full structural and condition report, a roof and rainwater inspection, a check on stonework and pointing, and testing for movement in the tower. Make the building watertight, because a church empty for two winters will have lost lead and taken water into the timbers. Then design the insertions, taking specialist advice on breathability, because sealing a lime built structure with modern materials traps moisture and causes damage. Heating a single tall volume is a real problem, and underfloor systems, insulated floor build ups and mezzanines are the usual answers. Services, drainage and access have to be brought in across ground that cannot be dug freely.
Lenders are cautious. An unconverted church is not a house, has no comparable evidence to value against, may have no services and cannot be occupied, so ordinary residential mortgages are rarely available. Most purchases are funded by cash, by bridging or development finance, or by a self build facility releasing money in stages against a valuer's inspections, with a residential mortgage taken out once the building is habitable. Budget for a longer, more expensive build than an equivalent new house, allow a serious contingency, and expect insurance during the works to need a specialist broker.
Churches on the site
Every church for sale on Homebinding carries its history, not just its floor area. The listing shows the denomination and the body selling it, the date and the architect where known, the statutory list entry with its grade and description, and a full set of photographs inside and out. Where the building sits in a burial ground, the page says so rather than leaving it to be discovered. Where a scheme is still to be made, the listing says that too, so buyers understand the timetable they are joining.
Alongside the sales, the places of worship directory lists every congregation: churches, chapels, meeting houses, mosques, synagogues, temples and gurdwaras, with their services, their contact details and their buildings. It exists because a building's future is easier to understand when its present is on record, and because a village that can see what it has is better placed to decide what happens to it.
This is not advice. Sources: the Church Commissioners for England and the Mission and Pastoral Measure 2011 on the closure and disposal of church buildings; the Church of England faculty jurisdiction and the diocesan advisory committees; the Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes and the Methodist Church standing orders; the Church of Scotland General Trustees and presbytery mission planning; Historic England, Cadw, Historic Environment Scotland and the Historic Environment Division in Northern Ireland on listing and listed building consent; the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Planning Portal on change of use and the ecclesiastical exemption; the Ministry of Justice on burials and the removal of human remains; Natural England, NatureScot and Natural Resources Wales on bat licensing; the Churches Conservation Trust and the National Churches Trust on the care and reuse of church buildings; and legislation.gov.uk for the Acts cited.
