Timber that Remembers

The church had been waiting for us long before we found it.

A quiet sentinel just off the main road, its finial not pointing so much to heaven as to time itself. The timber floors whispered as we stepped inside that first afternoon. Creaking not with age alone, but with the weight of 140 years of prayers, farewells, and hymns. Dust caught in the coloured glass and broke into fragments of burnt orange, ruby, sapphire, and vibrant yellow, as though even light wanted to stay here longer.

We didn’t see a building. We saw a sanctuary.

It was never ours to keep, not in the selfish sense.

This place was made for people. To shelter them, hold them, remind them they belonged to something larger than their own days. We could not let those stories fade into silence, tucked away like relics. The walls deserved to hear new voices. The floors deserved to learn new rhythms.

So, we opened the doors.

Not to a congregation, but to travellers. A couple stealing a weekend away. A writer searching for stillness. A widow tracing her childhood streets, resting where her parents once sang. Each guest arrived carrying their own unfinished story, and somehow this church knows how to receive these stories.

We chose Airbnb because it felt like the most democratic of pulpits. An open invitation to anyone who longed for sanctuary. Not everyone believes in churches, but everyone believes in pausing, in breathing, in belonging for a while. Here, the pulpit no longer preaches; it listens. The pew no longer enforces silence – together they cradle laughter. The timber floors record every new footstep, folding them into the old ones until past and present are inseparable.

And when her guests leave, they do not take the stories with them. They leave them behind, tucked into the grains of cedar, cast in the glow of the leadlight windows. The church grows fuller, not emptier, with every departure.

We didn’t turn the church into an Airbnb to make it ours. We did it so it could remain everyone’s. A living archive, where history isn’t sealed behind glass, but carried forward by the people who sleep, dream, and wake beneath her roof.

This isn’t just accommodation. It’s the ongoing writing of a 140-year-old book. Each guest another line, another stanza, another verse preciously captured into timber that remembers.

When you step through the doors of this 140-year-old church, it feels less like entering a building and more like being welcomed into a story that has been unfolding for generations.

The timber floors whisper with the footsteps of those who came before, the stained-glass windows scatter light in colours too rich to describe, and the soaring ceilings invite both awe and stillness.

Lovingly restored, the church blends its historic soul with the comfort and elegance of modern living. Every detail has been carefully tended. There is no work to be done, only memories to be made. It’s not just accommodation; it’s an experience.

Already, it has become a sanctuary for travellers. Couples have arrived seeking romance and left having written their own love stories into the timber and glass. From anniversaries beneath leadlight windows to quiet weekends where the only soundtrack is birdsong and laughter, this romantic heritage church stay has proved itself to be more than a building. It is a keeper of moments.

Through Airbnb as an exclusive platform, these stories have been shared and multiplied. Guests come as strangers, but they leave as part of the church’s living memory. The walls know their whispers, the floors remember their footsteps, and the air still hums with their joy.

Yet for all its openness to the world, the church seems to wait for something more. It calls to the dreamer who longs to make it their own: to host retreats, to curate romantic escapes, or simply to live each day inside history made tender by love.

This is not just a building. It is a heritage treasure, a sanctuary, a stage for timeless romance, and a lifestyle ready-made. The only question left is: who will continue its story?

Is that you?

Starting to lift the floorboards

The original entryway

Floor boards waiting to be denailed

Machined floorboards being laid

The Mezzanine Beam never left the church it was machined insitu

Floor in place and sanded and polished

Stair hand rails being made

A volute in the making using timber from under the floor

Patterns for cutouts of the volutes

The original pulpit

Pulpit becoming a breakfast bar

Pulpit conversion by Three of a Kind