Would you live in a Church?

Sky King · 07-07-2013 11:34PM #1

I saw an old one for sale on daft with planning permission for conversion into a residential dwelling and I happened to be driving past it the other day and wandered in for a look.

It's a lovely site with great views of the surrounding countryside. The only thing is that it comes with a graveyard, and that in itself raises questions, because that is effectively your garden. How do you deal with that? Do you bulldoze the headstones for your flowerbeds and risk being haunted forever? Do you tend to and maintain them - making a feature out of them? Or segregate them from the rest of the garden to keep the pets and kids out. Would you have living relatives of deceased people visiting your garden for years to pay respects to its inhabitants!! There are graves there from the 1950's! Would you see the dead people as your friends and talk to them every day like tom hanks with the spalding basketball in Castaway?

Would you mind living alone in an old church where tens of thousands people have prayed, been christened, married and had their funerals for 250 years?

I personally think it would be a really cool and unique house, interested to hear what other people would think though.Anyone else i mentioned it to thinks its creepy and weird.

07-07-2013 11:35PM

Was it repossessed?

07-07-2013 11:39PM

I think you could make a really unique home out of the space available, with a floating 2nd floor and huge open plan areas. It could be spectacular.

The graveyard is something else though, and I don't think you can just bulldoze down the headstones!

eirebread · 07-07-2013 11:41PM

I would teleport back to Medieval times and become a Knight or even a Monk.

Yawns · 07-07-2013 11:43PM

Could I put a toilet on the altar?

Sky King · 07-07-2013 11:43PM

I don't think you can just bulldoze down the headstones!

It's weird though isn't it? Should there be provision for this in the sale? Like if I buy the church am I buying the headstones and the skeletons and **** as well??

MadYaker · 07-07-2013 11:44PM

I think there could be potential legal issues if some of the graves are as recent as the 1950s but I'm not certain. If the graves weren't there or if they were 100s of years old I wouldn't mind it to be honest.

endacl · 07-07-2013 11:45PM

It's just a big empty building, so in principle, no problem. People have lived in odder places.

Would be a bitch to heat though...

minidazzler · 07-07-2013 11:46PM

Any link?

the_syco · 07-07-2013 11:46PM

This; http://www.formerglory.ie/property-lisschurch.html ?

As for the graveyard, I doubt you'd be allowed to bulldoze it. The dead may not be able to haunt you, but the living descents of the dead would probably kill you.

=-=

Rent it out for gangbangs and orgy's?

Sky King · 07-07-2013 11:46PM

One of the graves had withered flowers on it!!

Most were fairly overgrown to be honest.

CianRyan · 07-07-2013 11:47PM

Wilson was a hand ball.

Sky King · 07-07-2013 11:47PM

No Syco that's not it, here

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8523/8578314508_73acc6f4bd_z.jpg

FreshKnickers · 07-07-2013 11:47PM

A graveyard in me front garden? No harm I suppose until the aul Zombie apocolypse kick in. Then my friends will be all "That's wiped the smug look off FreshKnickers' face."

smellslikeshoes · 07-07-2013 11:48PM

The graveyard is not your property when they sell off churchs afaik. So depending on how close it is it could be a real pain in the ass. You also can't keep people from going to the graveyard so your driveway would essentially be a right of way to the graveyard depending on how the site is laid out.

endacl · 07-07-2013 11:48PM

FreshKnickers wrote: »

A graveyard in me front garden? No harm I suppose until the aul Zombie apocolypse kick in. Then my friends will be all "That's wiped the smug look off FreshKnickers' face."

Fresh knickers would be the least of your worries!

mawk · 07-07-2013 11:51PM

But if you are the owner of the graveyard.. Probably most of them will be buried with wedding rings and other jewelry! Revenue stream!

Femme_Fatale · 07-07-2013 11:51PM

Yeh I love ecclesiastical buildings - being able to turn one into a house would be cool. There's a restaurant in Skibbereen in West Cork that's a converted church (imaginatively named The Church) and it looks awesome.

Witchie · 07-07-2013 11:55PM

Buy it and invite us all over for a party. Would be great craic.

I love old buildings like that and love when they are given a new lease of life.

RDM_83 again · 07-07-2013 11:55PM

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

The graveyard is not your property when they sell off churchs afaik. So depending on how close it is it could be a real pain in the ass. You also can't keep people from going to the graveyard so your driveway would essentially be a right of way to the graveyard depending on how the site is laid out.

Also if the site is old there could be burials right up to the walls of the church, so if you were doing any deep digging you could end up coming across human remains, which you'd have to get the cops in to sign off on, and I'm not sure who would pay for removal etc.

endacl · 07-07-2013 11:55PM

Femme_Fatale wrote: »

Yeh I love ecclesiastical buildings - being able to turn one into a house would be cool. There's a restaurant in Skibbereen in West Cork that's a converted church (imaginatively named The Church) and it looks awesome.

There's a pub in Dublin called the church. It's a bit crap.

jill_valentine · 08-07-2013 12:02AM

Arcade Fire bought a church and converted it to a live-in recording studio. They promptly discovered that living in a church in Canada in winter is very, very, very cold, before a storm collapsed the roof in.

They don't live in a church anymore.

The headstones and stuff wouldn't bother me, but the thing is, as cool and slightly supervillain-y as it would be to live in a disused holy building, they're not really built for comfortable living.

Zen65 · 08-07-2013 12:14AM

Sky King wrote: »

Would you live in a church?

In a church, yes.

In Offaly, no.

Z

S28382 · 08-07-2013 12:17AM

It would be a fair unnerving feeling having a **** in a church knowing your doing it in the house of the lord.........sure he watches everything.

Mr. CooL ICE · 08-07-2013 12:22AM

Only if there's decent broadband available.

I would install an organ. I would then spend hours upon hours playing the main line of la gadda da vida over and over. Badly.

Gbear · 08-07-2013 12:32AM

Sky King wrote: »

It's a lovely site with great views of the surrounding countryside. The only thing is that it comes with a graveyard, and that in itself raises questions, because that is effectively your garden. How do you deal with that? Do you bulldoze the headstones for your flowerbeds and risk being haunted forever? Do you tend to and maintain them - making a feature out of them? Or segregate them from the rest of the garden to keep the pets and kids out. Would you have living relatives of deceased people visiting your garden for years to pay respects to its inhabitants!! There are graves there from the 1950's!

The obsession our society has with dead people is just stupid.

I'd offer families of the dead the opportunity to rebury them and those that don't have family, their family don't care, or whatever else, I'd dispose of through whatever process is required by law.

Land is too precious to be wasting it on dead people.

Other than that, some churches are lovely buildings, wasted on those that currently use them. Carting off as much of the Jesusy stuff as possbile, throwing up a few dividing walls and maybe a mezzanine where the altar usually sits could well make the church a beautiful place to live.
Some insulation mightn't go astray either.
I wonder can you get double-glazed stained glass windows?

Either way it'd be bloody expensive. Sort of a mad billionaire's vanity project perhaps.

Ruudi_Mentari · 08-07-2013 12:37AM

Local residents tend to hate those type of conversions, and feel they should be protected structures so would have to put up with that.

But there is a really old/small church on my road, which I slept in a few times which was cool in itself so i can only imagine if it wasn't so run down

jill_valentine · 08-07-2013 12:44AM

Gbear wrote: »

I wonder can you get double-glazed stained glass windows?

I know you're joking but -

Generally what they do is install a separate panel of double-glazing a few inches inside the window recess, leaving the original stained glass untouched. Same effect without risking the original leadwork.

#TheMoreYouKnow

Corkfeen · 08-07-2013 12:56AM

Sky King wrote: »

It's weird though isn't it? Should there be provision for this in the sale? Like if I buy the church am I buying the headstones and the skeletons and **** as well??

Most old churches tend to fall into the protected buildings category. Which means it requires a lot of paperwork and redtape to change anything about the exterior of the building.

DonkeyStyle \o/ · 08-07-2013 01:01AM

I'd only buy it if I had a lot of money to renovate/decorate it in a novel way. If the inside is going to end up looking like a new apartment with stained glass windows, I don't see the point. You just know someone's going to do it though.

smellslikeshoes · 08-07-2013 01:34AM

Gbear wrote: »

The obsession our society has with dead people is just stupid.

I'd offer families of the dead the opportunity to rebury them and those that don't have family, their family don't care, or whatever else, I'd dispose of through whatever process is required by law.

Land is too precious to be wasting it on dead people.

Even if the graveyard land was part of the sale (which I think usually isn't) moving a graveyard would be an absolutely insane amount of work and would have to assume red tape. I doubt it would be worth it, if you're buying a church you just need to accept you will have a graveyard beside you.

Would you live in a Church?

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