Leap of faith behind one lady’s chapel

The former Hopton United Reformed Church at Mirfield, West Yorkshire, was riddled with damp, some timber was rotten, windows were smashed and the building had been targeted by thieves.

She snapped it up for £40,000 at auction before she had even stepped inside it.

Fast forward to March 2014 and the 33-year-old businesswoman is still a long way from moving in but she has lost none of the idealism and creative spark which led her to take a leap of faith in the first place.

Some of the chapel windows are still boarded up and the inside is more or less as it was when she bought it.

She has developed family homes on the site (which start from £225,000) which will be sole to fund her own chapel project.

In the last two years she has masterminded the restoration of the stable block and school house, which form part of the chapel complex of buildings.

This work has seen the creation of five family homes, and she is awaiting the construction of six new build houses. Just one of the renovations has sold to date, with a second under offer.

Only when they are sold can Miss Parker push on with the biggest project – the full restoration of the imposing chapel and its conversion into her own luxury home with seven bedrooms.

This time last year Miss Parker had hopes of moving into the chapel this summer but the building probably won’t be ready until 2015, she says.

The chapel has been made weather proof and is no longer damp and most of the 23 windows have been repaired or replaced at a cost of around £1,000 apiece.

Over £100,000 has been spent on the chapel but it’s barely made a difference to the interior, which includes pews, an organ and a pulpit, none of which will be removed during a restoration which she believes will make it unique in Britain.

Miss Parker cannot wait to get started on the chapel.

“The chapel was on English Heritage’s At Risk register but is now safe and weather tight. Work can commence as soon as the houses at the back are sold.

“I am still enjoying what I am doing but there have been difficulties. The main ones are the weather, with it being a building site, and the money. To keep things moving, you have to keep selling.”

Since October she has lived on site in one of her show homes and now works full-time on the project after she sold her estate agency business.

Once the property market improves, work can begin on the final piece of the jigsaw.

The chapel project may be taking longer than she planned but she is philosophical about the delays.

“The only thing holding me back is selling the properties. I am laid back and there is no stress,” she jokes.

The toughest, most time-consuming part of the project is behind her, she says.

“The hardest bit is going through the planning process and how long it takes. The planning process took longer than the building process.”

The message she wants to get across is that restoring old buildings is a lot of hard work, often costly but also very rewarding.

Said Miss Parker: “What I am trying to show is that you can make money ‘at the back’ to save the front.

“Saving buildings like this takes a lot of time, money and effort.

“I am trying to show it has a viable use but without damaging any historical features – this has not been done before.”