Around.

100 church buildings close across the country each year.

Just keeping the roof on and the cold out, it's astonishing how much money that costs.

But a revolution is underway to.

Save them. Our aim is to rescue and repair redundant, disused places of worship all across England and Wales.

From church ruins to art studios, food markets, and nightclubs, I want to find out what's happening to Britain's abandoned church buildings, and should they be saved?

Welcome to St. Lawrence's Church.

Built on the site of Three Holy Whales lies St. Lawrence's Church in Gumbfreston, Wales. Its medieval stone structure, partially hidden in a wooded valley, was being slowly reclaimed by the wild.

It first came to my attention in 2019. The church was still open and still in use, actually, so it still had services, even though it was completely cloaked in Ivy and the slates were flying off the roof and the pews, they were covered in rot and mold.

Rachel's charity, Friends of Friendless Churches, did a condition survey. They found 15th century wall paintings hidden in the walls. It would cost £600,000 to restore the church, money the small charity did not have.

But I just knew it was special. I knew it was a place that I couldn't let just fall into ruin. And that was the only other option for this church.

The four years she applied for grants and finally received one to help restore the church this year.

Is it a thankless task? No, because this building that we're sitting in, it's been here since at least the 13th century. It's been in the state for a decade or so. That's like a blip in its lifetime. So I always think we're doing it for people in the future. There's always that hope that somebody will come and thank you for what you've done, even if it's 50, 100 years in the future.

That's exactly what happened in 1992, when stained glass artist Benjamin Finn, discovered what looked like an abandoned church on the outskirts of Wiccom Bishops, Lessex. At that point, there were no windows in the cave, so you could actually just climb up and clamber down into the church. I just came down and had a little look. The 12th century church had been declared redundant back in 1970. But in 1975, Friends of Friendless Churches took it over and partly restored it. Benjamin approached the charity and a deal was struck. He's now been working at St. Peter's for nearly three decades. I found the space inspiring. It harks back to the medieval era when stained glass originated and flourished. It made me part of the history of stained glass itself. But churches used to be community spaces central to any village in the UK. The Duke of Ryan, Chichester, has ensured it stays that way. The Gothic Revival Church was built in 1852 and has been continually converted to suit its communities needs. It was to concentrate to about 50 years ago now. But then in the early 90s, it reopened as an indoor market. In the 98, it was basically turned into a pub.

It was quite a scene. It was open a lot later than.

It is now. It was more of a nightclub. There was a little bit of backlash there. The church is now a pub and restaurant. Because this building otherwise probably would have crumbled by now if it wasn't taken over privately. I think it's brilliant that they've completely respected the original structure. You're a churchgoer. How do you feel about church conversions? It always makes me.

Feel slightly uncomfortable, but I've never quite worked out whether that's just a personal reaction of mine or whether there's some principle involved.

Niall Gooch is a writer, commentator, and Christian. He believes we can't save all church buildings and that sometimes we should bring the bulldozers in.

This is such an old country. There's so much around that's old. It's very attractive and attractive, but you just can't keep it all because it just restricts more development of housing that's needed. I think possibly even it does contribute to a sense of Britain as a theme park of the olden days rather than thinking about what's best for people now.

I put all this to the Bishop of Bramsbury, who is in charge of church and cathedral buildings for the Church of England. Why preserve a church building that's been around for hundreds of years, but is crumbling down and really expensive to uphold, when you could create a new building that's much cheaper, purpose-built, and ready for that community?

Because we are people who need to know our story. These extraordinary store houses of local memory are on everybody's doorstep. We have nearly 16,000 parish churches, many of them, 800, 900,000 years old, all telling the story of that local place. I think that being a Christian country is not just a description of the present, it's an inheritance from the past. And so in order to know our future and to tell a better story about the future, we've got to retain a way of telling the story about who we've been in the past.

But are we really a Christian country? For the first time ever in a census, less than half the population of England and Wales described themselves as Christian. Data from the Bruley Consultancy shows this decline in religious congregations only really began in the 1970s. In 1960, there were 53,000 two-200 church congregations in the UK. The number fell to 45,500 in 2020. St. Mark's in central London was one of the victims of the '70s. The church and Mayfair had hosted presidents and kings. But after the Second World War, its local population dwindled and it was deconsecrated by the Church of England in 1974. The Grade 1 listed building spent 30 years on historic England's heritage at risk register, but in 2018, Wagley underwent a five million pound revamp. Spread across four floors and with bounces at its doors, the church is now a food market called the Mercato Metropolitano Mayfair. Does it ever feel a bit weird serving food on an altar or wine on an altar.

What is the main purpose of the Church for me? Was sharing bread and water, and then my Jesus decided to turn into wine, which was a great idea for me. And that's what we are doing here.

And was there any backlash at the time? You're converting the Church that had was at the time, deconsecrated, but it was still a Church?

Not at all. Us being Italian, we went to talk to the Church directly in Italy, and they told us that once the Church is deconsecrated, it's not the Church anymore. You can do whatever you want. So people who feel some urge to go against us in this is people who do not know their religion very well.

Wow. Look at all this new scaffolding.

I know it's good.

Isn't it? Restorations are now fully underway at St. Lawrence's Church. We're standing in exactly.

The place.

That I.

Interviewed you last time. Yeah, I think so. But now it's bright.

Yeah. There are no rotting pews. How does it feel finally seeing the.

Restorations underway? It really does feel amazing. I thought we would really never get to this stage. It's taken a long, long time, and all of the pews have been taken to be humiliated. All the wall paintings are protected. So yeah, big changes.

And you said with this church, you did a condition survey. It was way too expensive, but you said, There's something special about this church. I want to save.

This church.

And now you've been successful. How does.

That feel? Oh, gosh, I actually have goosebumps, as you said that. To get to this point, it was hard. Year after year went by and there was still no solution. I just felt that this had to be compressed in the earth.

What do you see as the.

Future of this building? So we'll have a worshiping function. It will be open every single day, so people can come. It can be a place for private worship, people just to visit and to see how cool and ancient it is. I've worked on lots of listed buildings, historic buildings, but churches are the place where I've really found the most moving and in some ways, the most desperate cases, really. That's why I really want to help them. They are the spiritual investment of generations of people. They are a community's greatest expression of itself over centuries. And it's ours and it's still here. And that's incredible, and that you can just drive to any village, really, or town or city, and there will be a church that will probably be open and you can go in and you can experience all of that. I find that really special and something that should be protected..