Former bakery owner transforms 200-year-old Methodist chapel in Yorkshire Dales into perfect retirement pad

It’s one thing to daydream about your ideal retirement but it’s quite another to make it actually happen. For many years Lisa Wallace fantasised about living in an old chapel in the English countryside with her husband, Phil.

Phil, a teacher, was keen to move to Wensleydale – a place he had visited since he was a teenager.

When the couple retired in 2021, they began looking in earnest at properties in the area.

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"I was doing a property search one morning and this chapel in Middleham in Wensleydale popped up,” says Lisa, who is originally from Northern California.

Retired couple Lisa Wallace and Phil Tong had ambitious plans to transform a 200-year-old redundant methodist chapel into the perfect retirement pad. Picture supplied by Air TV.Retired couple Lisa Wallace and Phil Tong had ambitious plans to transform a 200-year-old redundant methodist chapel into the perfect retirement pad. Picture supplied by Air TV.
Retired couple Lisa Wallace and Phil Tong had ambitious plans to transform a 200-year-old redundant methodist chapel into the perfect retirement pad. Picture supplied by Air TV.

“The next day we drove from our home in Derbyshire to see it and I immediately fell in love. We went through a tortuous sealed bidding process and were told there were 19 other people putting in bids.

“A lot of Methodist chapels were built on main roads for access but the fact that this was on a quiet road was quite special.”

The couple managed to secure the property for £173,000 and with a renovation budget of £380,000 they employed a local builder who was given the ambitious brief of turning it into a cosy home.

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What happened next is set to be broadcast on HGTV’s Derelict Rescue on Monday, November 18.

The couple bought the  building for £173,000.The couple bought the  building for £173,000.
The couple bought the building for £173,000.

The episode, titled “Yorkshire Sanctuary”, sees Lisa and Phil take on the ambitious conversion with gusto.

The former Methodist Church dates back to 1794 when it was built as a simple meeting room and Sunday school.

The chapel was added about 100 years later and worshippers packed into the building for more than a century. However, it closed its doors in 2019 due to dwindling numbers.

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"We wanted to keep as much of the chapel interior as we could – we didn’t want to cut it up into boxes,” says Lisa.

The old floor joists form the treds of a stunning staircase and the original choir stalls stand proudly in front of a new mezzanine level, which was created as a TV and chill-out area.The old floor joists form the treds of a stunning staircase and the original choir stalls stand proudly in front of a new mezzanine level, which was created as a TV and chill-out area.
The old floor joists form the treds of a stunning staircase and the original choir stalls stand proudly in front of a new mezzanine level, which was created as a TV and chill-out area.

“This building has a main chapel and the old meeting room on the side, which meant that we could turn the meeting room into bedrooms and retain the inside of the chapel as much as possible.”

Lisa’s vision was to have an open kitchen at the heart of the house and to reuse as much of the original building materials as possible during the renovation.

The old floor joists form the treds of a stunning staircase and the original choir stalls stand proudly in front of a new mezzanine level, which was created as a TV and chill-out area.

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The false chapel ceiling was removed to reveal the original roof trusses and let in more light.

The chapel was built on the side of the old meeting room, which meant that the couple could turn the meeting room into bedrooms and retain the inside of the chapel as an open  plan living space.The chapel was built on the side of the old meeting room, which meant that the couple could turn the meeting room into bedrooms and retain the inside of the chapel as an open  plan living space.
The chapel was built on the side of the old meeting room, which meant that the couple could turn the meeting room into bedrooms and retain the inside of the chapel as an open plan living space.

The stars of the show, exquisitely framed by pure white walls in the open plan living area, are the 18 stained glass windows, which were painstakingly restored and triple glazed by specialists at Antique Glass Studio in Bradford.

"We wanted the building to feel warm and inviting and cosy, which is a weird thing considering we have nine metre-high ceilings,” says Lisa.

The couple hoped that the project would take 15 months to complete but due to the spiralling cost of raw materials and the height of the ceilings, it ended up taking two years and costing £750,000 – double their original budget.

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"We’d done a lot of research and we thought we were prepared for the work,” says Lisa.

“What we didn’t anticipate was the fact that it takes so much longer to do anything when you are working with such high ceilings. Something that would take five minutes if it were on ground level took 25 minutes and that’s really where the costs overran."

There were several moments during the project when the couple questioned their sanity.

"We went to visit our sons in Mexico last Christmas and I remember walking around the chapel with the builder before we left, saying ‘ I don’t love my building at the moment,” says Lisa. “If someone had walked in and offered to give me all my money back, I would have handed over the keys instantly.

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"But when we got back from Christmas and we saw everything with fresh eyes and we were a little more chilled, I was like: ‘Ok, I love my building’”.

Lisa and Phil furnished their new home primarily with secondhand finds they bought at auction.

"Part of that was economics because we could get some amazing pieces of furniture at a fraction of what you’d pay in a shop,” Lisa says.

"The other part was because the chapel is Arts & Crafts era, we wanted to honour that with pieces from that time. We didn’t want to start putting modern Scandi furniture in there.”

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The 7ft long sofas were one of only a few pieces of furniture that the couple bought new, from The Castle furniture shop in Ripon.

The other modern element of their home is their state-of-the-art matt black kitchen where Lisa hopes to run cookery courses from next year. “That was when it started to look like a home and when people could see what we were trying to put achieve,” she adds. “It felt like that was a critical point when everything started to come together.”

The couple also installed 2,000 metres of underfloor heating pipes, to make their vast living space warm and cosy.

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Lisa and Phil moved in less than a month ago and are already delighted with their new home. “It’s everything we had envisaged but better,” says Lisa.

The programme will be broadcast at on HGTV at 9pm on Monday, November 18 and streamed on Discovery+ thereafter.

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