It’s just about three score years and 10 since Philip Larkin wrote Church Going, his beautiful meditation on the increasing redundancy of places of worship in Britain’s towns and cities. Standing among “matting, seats, and stone / And little books”, in a “serious house on serious earth” the poet wondered: “When churches fall completely out of use / What shall we turn them into?”
Since then, more than 1,700 churches have been closed for Anglican worship, and Larkin’s question has had a variety of answers. About a quarter have been knocked down, and roughly the same number converted into housing. Some have become open-plan offices, or shopping experiences, or innovation hubs; in Bristol, a former Georgian church has become Circomedia, “a world renowned centre for contemporary circus training”; in another, formerly St Benedict’s in Manchester, there are climbing walls and “bouldering experiences” that take beginners and experienced mountaineers up above Victorian gothic arches and stained glass.
