In 2018, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), the UK’s oldest conservation charity, took on a Grade II* ‘building at risk’ near Maidstone, Kent. This ‘sleeping beauty’ had been empty for around 50 years. Today, this remarkable property, now transformed into a comfortable three bedroomed home, is ready for a new chapter and is looking for new owners.

Known as the Old House Project, SPAB has demonstrated the practical ways in which older buildings, like St Andrew's Chapel, can be sensitively repaired and new architectural features incorporated to make a comfortable home for modern lives. With a significant history and almost hidden behind an overgrown garden the building needed considerable, considerate repair and for almost seven years, SPAB has worked to bring this characterful medieval building back to life using the very best conservation knowledge, methods and materials.

Matthew Slocombe, CEO of SPAB explains, ‘The SPAB approach involves understanding the building you’re dealing with to work out its story and structural development. By asking the questions: who, what, when, why, and how, the best conservation solution can be identified.  Ultimately that is the way to ensure an old building is treated sympathetically.’

St Andrew’s Chapel has had a colourful and fascinating history: as the name suggests, it once housed a relic of St Andrew. It’s since been in possession of the Tudor poet Thomas Wyatt and most recently was a grocery and post office serving the local community.

Over the course of the last seven years SPAB has worked closely with Kent Archaeological Society, Historic England, local people and the council to uncover more of the building’s story and to bring St Andrew’s back to life.

As a heritage charity, SPAB is concerned about the decline of traditional building craft skills. Its approach to a complex project like this, has been to understand the history of the building, the way it was built, adapted and the materials used. For example, we learned that the building was once part of Boxley Abbey and that its main section, built from local ragstone, dates to 1484. Crowned with a charmingly irregular Kent peg-tiled roof, SPAB worked with a local roofing firm and specialist manufacturers to replace damaged tiles with new handmade clay ones.

At a time when around a fifth of housing stock is classified as historic (pre-1919) we know a lot of the work on older buildings is being undertaken by people without specialist skills – this is an imbalance SPAB addresses through its educational outreach activities, open days and courses and working parties. At St Andrew’s we hosted up to 100 participants learning craft skills under the guidance of SPAB experts at our working parties: repairing windows, preparing lime mortar and even building a new acoustic garden wall of ‘rammed earth’ creating a cloistered walkway between the house and garage.

St Andrew’s, now a three bedroomed home, boasts wood fibre insulation and secondary glazing alongside an air source heating system that works without fossil fuel. Its wonderful new kitchen, bathroom and wireless lighting systems introduce contemporary comforts in a characterful building with conserved internal features including Art Deco lino.

St Andrew's Chapel is now for sale see Ferris & Co 

The building is unfurnished to allow purchasers the opportunity to make their own choices for their home. Designer Gemma Wright has considered the building's history in preparing:

Read some of the blogs about our Old House work:

• 2019 - Message from SPAB's Director
• 2020 - From Chapel to Home 
• 2020 - Roof tiles for our old house
• 2022 - Thomas Wyatt the romantic poet who once owned our old house
• 2022 - Historic England grant to repair the grade II listed former St Andrew's Chapel, Boxley
• 2024 - Archaeology
• 2025 - Nearing Completion