Shock over disrepair at historic church that was sold for just £1

St John’s Church in Roundhay, which has links to the Duchess of Cambridge, has fallen into disrepair since being sold in 2010 for a nominal £1 to the Pentecostal City Mission (PCM), a small-London based evangelical church.

The PCM has failed to file accounts with the Charity Commission for any year beyond that ending in March 2009 and that year’s accounts were only eventually filed more than two years after their due date.

The Church Commissioners, who manage the Church of England’s estate, transferred ownership of St John’s, which was founded in 1826, following its closure after a fall in congregation numbers.

The PCM initially used the church for a short period but its own congregation is only small and it is no longer using St John’s.

The churchyard, which has become wildly overgrown and inaccessible, includes the graves of several members of the Lupton family, who played major industrial and civic roles in the development of Leeds, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The bloodline to the Duchess of Cambridge, formerly Catherine Middleton, was established when Olive Lupton married Noel Middleton, a Leeds solicitor and the Duchess’s paternal great grandfather, in 1914.

Olive’s father, Francis Lupton, an alderman on Leeds Council who died in 1921, is one of several family members buried at St John’s.

But the churchyard is in need of remedial work estimated to cost more than £100,000 and Church Commissioners included a covenant when transferring ownership requiring the PCM to carry out the work.

However, the covenant only required the PCM to undertake the task by 2015. In addition, the church itself is no longer being used as a place of worship and is leaking water through holes in the roof.

A spokesman for the Church Commissioners said: “Continued Christian worship was by far the most suitable use for a former Anglican church.

“They had provided evidence of accounts and also provided a list of proposals planned for the church and churchyard. Given the information provided, the Church Commissioners were satisfied this was a suitable and viable use.”

Church Commissioners acknowledge they have no power to force work to be carried out on the churchyard until 2015 when 
legal action would become an option.

The spokesman added: “We had been given every indication and promise the churchyard would be a major priority and its repair would be undertaken on transfer of the building. It is unfortunate things haven’t progressed in the way we had hoped and we had been told they would.

In the meantime, repairs to the church itself can be enforced by Leeds City Council which has legal powers through legislation 
designed to protect listed buildings.

But funding is only likely to be available to carry out basic wind and waterproofing and not more substantial repairs to properly safeguard the future of the building. The council is preparing to take action before the end of October to avoid further damage over winter.

Christine Macniven, Leeds councillor for Roundhay, said an elderly resident had approached her after becoming distraught at the deterioration of the graveyard where his wife was interred.

“It’s a shocking state of affairs which can’t be allowed to continue,” she added.

A spokeswoman for the Charity Commission said: “We have noted the charity’s failure to file its annual documents and this is reflected in the red box against its entry on the online Register, which serves to inform the public and potential donors.

“We have written to the trustees on several occasions reminding them of their duties in this respect (five times in relation to their documents for financial year ended 31 March 2010 and four times in relation to their documents for financial year ended 31 March 2011).

“It is disappointing that the charity’s trustees have so far failed to comply with their duties. We will continue to contact the charity in this respect.”

The PCM has not responded to repeated requests to comment.