A RUNDOWN 19th-century Gothic church in Denholme converted into a couple’s £1 million ‘forever home’ has featured on national television.

Sean and Debs Kennedy-Tallis spent just under £420,0000 on turning the dilapidated St Paul’s Church in Halifax Road, Denholme, into a four-bedroom home for themselves which is now valued at between £950,000 and £1m.

They bought the church in its original damaged state for just £85,000 at auction in September 2017.

The couple got to work on realising their vision and even lived in a caravan in the church grounds during the building work, which they mostly completed themselves.

Their three-and-a-half-year project has been featured throughout on BBC One’s Homes Under the Hammer, which gave an update on the home in a recent episode.

The Grade II-listed church was built in 1846 and closed in 1999 due to dry rot, remaining untouched until Sean and Debs started their work on it.

Historic England says the church was first listed in March, 1985.

The church also features a graveyard which has been tidied-up as part of the couple’s project.

Homes Under The Hammer presenter Martin Roberts, who studied at the University of Bradford in the 1980s, described the church as “a bit broken but majestic all the same”.

Fellow presenter Martel Maxwell paid a visit to the church a few weeks after Sean and Debs bought it in 2017.

Sean said: “This is our forever home. It was such a beautiful building in such a sad state.

“We want it not just to be our home, but part of the community again.

“We’re happy for people to come here. We wanted to save the building.

“It was all done prior to lockdown. We’re not 100 per cent there with all of it yet.

“The valuation of the house now gives us a good feeling that all of the money we have spent on it has not been lost.

“It’s just a landmark this building.

“We were told that the roof was in such a bad way that if we had had another bad winter we would have lost the building. So we got it just in time. First, we had to repair and reinforce the roof.

“The building was on its knees when we bought it.”

The couple also plan to open-up part of the church building as a bed and breakfast in the future.

Sean added he and Debs, who got married during the project work, worked well as a team as they completed most of the work themselves. He said: “It never got too stressful. We knew we just had to put 100 per cent into it. We had a few hiccups but nothing that was ever going to put us off.”