5:10pm Monday 31st August 2009
By David Watkinson
A CONVERTED Methodist chapel has opened as a “luxurious spa” holiday home complete with sauna, indoor barbecue and hot tub.
Whether the Primitive Methodists who founded the Kaber Chapel just outside Kirkby Stephen in 1892 would have approved is debatable but the restored building is now being marketed for people looking for a luxury break.
Several of the original features have been retained, meaning guests can enjoy mod-cons alongside an anti-que organ and historic pews in the former church hall.
Just five years ago the remote building in the village of Kaber was still used as a chapel but it has now been converted into a popular holiday venue.
The outbuildings at the site have been rebuilt to adjoin the chapel and create an area with a Scandinavian feel.
There is a hot tub and a lavvo – a Scandinavian indoor grill – and the pine seats are covered with reindeer skins.
Denise Dahl, 54, bought the derelict building in 2007 and has spent £400,000 renovating the property, including rebuilding the rotten roof. Mrs Dahl, who lives in Norway with her husband Terje, said there was initial scepticism about the project in the village and Methodist community.
But she said: “Initially there was some opposition but we have regenerated the building and brought it back into use.
“The last service was held in the chapel in 2004 and it was empty for three years until we bought it.
“It now looks like a boutique hotel inside and is very modern but from the outside it is actually very similar.”
Mrs Dahl spent much of her childhood, where she grew up in Lincolnshire and Hertfordshire, visiting relatives in Kirkby Stephen and said that when she heard the property, which accommodates up to 12 people, was for sale she knew she wanted to buy it.
A spokesman for the Methodist Church in Great Britain said the conversion was to be welcomed because it kept the chapel in use.
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