Green light for Welsh Baptist Chapel conversion
A DEVELOPER that wants to restore the former Welsh Baptist Chapel in Manchester, listed as one of the most at risk Victorian buildings in the country, has won planning permission but faces resistance from a long-term tenant.
Derby-based Church Converts is proposing to turn the derelict council-owned chapel and an adjoining Sunday School building into 93 flats aimed at post-graduate students.
This has prompted opposition from Muslim worshippers who have used part of the building as a mosque and Islamic Academy since 1974.
They want to stay but will be evicted to make way for the development.
Church Converts has already acquired a lease from the council and plans to buy the freehold. In a statement developer Simon Linford said the Islamic Academy had been given a year’s notice and the offer of help finding alternative premises.
No one at the Academy could be reached for comment but in an earlier statement a spokesman said they had tried to maintain the buildings, and a deal to buy it fell through due to a “lack of commitment” from the council.
The grade II* listed church was designed by Sir Charles Barry shortly before working on the Houses of Parliament and the Manchester Athenaeum, now part of the Manchester Art Gallery.
It was built as a Unitarian Chapel in 1837 and acquired by Welsh Baptists in the 1920s. The Jehovah’s Witnesses then used it in the 1960s until it was compulsorily purchased by Manchester City Council in 1974 in order to make way for a planned motorway. This idea was shelved and the building was then leased to the Islamic Academy. The roof of the main church building was removed in 2006 due to safety fears but the Sunday School building, that houses the mosque, is in tact.
Mr Linford said: “We first spoke to the Islamic Academy at the end of March 2013 to give them advance warning that we were going to be filing a planning application which included the former Sunday School, in order to give them as much time to find a new home as possible. We then wrote to them again in early April and met them, clarifying this intention and offered our help to find them alternative premises. This offer was repeated as recently as last month.
“We can confirm that today (Friday 14) the Academy has applied to the court for a new lease. This will be opposed by us as landlords upon the grounds that we are seeking possession of the Academy for our redevelopment of the Academy and the Welsh Baptist Chapel. Our legitimate opposition is based on statute and was communicated to the Academy as early as 10 May 2013 at the outset of this process.”
