Outside the village of Barcombe, in the rolling South Downs, lies the Tin Tabernacle: a former chapel with walls of corrugated metal, a pitched roof and a tall, pink, arched front door. After almost 100 years as a church, the 139-year-old building had been used as community centre, wedding venue, meeting hall, office, workshop. Under its current owners, it gained a further use: an unusual family home.
When Peter and Heather Marshall bought the building in 2017, it was a derelict structure with planning permission in place to convert it to a residential home. “We’re architectural history freaks. We’ve always lived in houses that weren’t built as houses,” says Peter. “Also, my wife’s grandmother lived in a tin house in Norfolk as a child, so there’s a bit of a romantic thing there.”
