Historic Churches: Deeply Valued, Difficult to Value

Across England, historic churches form a familiar part of our national landscape. They reflect centuries of history and offer spaces for community gathering, faith and worship, music and art, quiet reflection and are often a hub for vital local services. However, maintaining these spaces and keeping them freely accessible to their local communities and the public incurs significant operating costs. While articulating these costs in monetary terms is relatively straightforward, quantifying the benefits they provide, particularly as a result of their unique historic character, proves more challenging. This study presents a novel, HM Treasury-approved economic approach that aims to better articulate the public value of historic churches.

This study is funded by the DCMS Culture and Heritage Capital (CHC) programme, which seeks to improve how we articulate and capture the wider benefits of heritage for economic decision making.

I am delighted to share Historic England’s latest economic research, which highlights and quantifies how much people value historic churches.

For centuries, historic churches have formed a vital part of our local places, serving as spaces for worship, community gathering or for private reflection. They form an essential and beautiful part of the nation’s landscape. They are a resource for people of all faiths and none.

However, caring for these buildings is increasingly difficult. Many historic churches are falling into disrepair, with congregations struggling to find resources for basic maintenance, let alone for essential repairs or major restoration work.

While information about the financial costs of upkeep is commonplace, the benefits of investing in the conservation and restoration of these magnificent assets remain poorly understood in monetary terms. Historic England is committed to building better evidence that captures and communicates the value of heritage. In collaboration with the Department of Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS), we are developing new tools, new evidence and multidisciplinary narratives to make this case for heritage to a wider audience.

This pioneering research, funded by the Culture and Heritage Capital (CHC) programme (I should declare an interest as chairman of its Advisory Board) uses new economic methods and draws on the views of 4,500 members of the public and over 27,000 choices they made between different investment packages for churches. The research was conducted in line with HM Treasury’s Green Book guidance, ensuring the results are suitable for informing future public policy and investment decisions.

The findings show the presence of a ‘heritage premium’. Members of the public would make a higher one-time donation to maintain and restore a historic church than a modern church. Regular churchgoers are willing to give the most for the restoration of a historic church, over four times more than a contemporary church (£15.40 compared to £3.80). The historic character of churches matters even more to the wider public, who, despite not regularly attending church, would still contribute significantly more to maintain a historic church than a modern one (£6.30 compared to £0.40). Both regular churchgoers and the wider public also expressed a willingness to pay for increased community activities and improved access to both historic and modern churches.

This research quantifies what we in the sector already know, which is that people actively care for and appreciate the special character historic churches bring to our streets and landscapes, regardless of whether they use churches for worship or not.

By demonstrating the economic, social, and cultural value of churches, we hope to secure continued investment and support for their preservation, ensuring these irreplaceable buildings continue to enrich our lives and communities for generations to come.

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What we did

This study uses an economic valuation technique known as a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) to understand people’s preferences and how much they are willing to pay for different aspects of a policy or proposal. This approach allows us to isolate and quantify what we call the ‘heritage premium’ associated with a church building's historic character when all other attributes are held constant. The method has been widely used in environmental economics to value clean air or green space and are now helping us understand the worth of historic churches.

We surveyed churchgoers, defined as people who regularly attend a church for the purpose of worship (‘Users’) and a representative sample of the general population (‘Non-users’) who do not attend a church regularly for worship. We asked them to choose between keeping different churches (historic and modern churches) as they are (with limited activities and in need of repair and maintenance) or opting for different improvement packages, varying the following:

  1. different levels of repair and conservation (from basic repair to full restoration).
  2. different types of community activities (e.g. hosting foodbanks or concerts),
  3. changes to access (more opening hours and an increased number of religious services)
  4. introducing new technology in the church (from Wi-Fi to interactive displays)

Each improvement came with a hypothetical cost.

We analysed over 27,000 choices (by over 4,500 individuals) considering:

  • How much people are willing to pay for specific improvements and improvement packages
  • Whether people are willing to pay for improvements more when they happen in a historic church compared to a modern church

What we found

People place significant value on all of England’s churches. The research demonstrates a quantifiable and monetisable ‘Heritage Premium’

  • The historic character of a church drives greater value.
    • People will pay significantly more to repair or restore a historic church.
    • Churchgoers (users) would pay £15.40 for the restoration of a historic church building compared to only £3.80 for the restoration of a modern church.
    • People who do not attend church regularly for worship (non-users) are also willing to pay more to restore a historic church than a modern church (£6.30 vs. £0.40).
    • As expected, regular churchgoers are willing to pay more for the restoration of historic churches than non-users (£15.40 compared to £6.30).
  • Out of the four improvement packages, both users and non-users valued conservation the most; they would willingly pay more for conservation compared to improved access or more community activities.
  • Interestingly, while a church's historic character impacts how people valued conservation and accessibility improvements, it has less influence on their willingness to pay for community activity improvements.

Why it matters

By successfully isolating and putting a monetary figure on a ‘heritage premium’, this study offers a robust, Treasury-approved way to articulate the value of heritage using economic techniques. These findings can be used to

  • Support investment decisions for historic churches and other heritage conservation
  • Understand public priorities, highlighting the importance people place on physical preservation and access to heritage
  • Evidence the economic values of the non-market benefits of heritage
  • Offer a valuable tool and method that can be applied to other heritage assets from theatres, museums, to parks and historic sites amongst others.

We conclude that England’s historic churches hold significant value for society, including but also extending beyond their function as places of worship, and this study demonstrates that the historic character of a church is a key driver of public value.  People, whether they are regular churchgoers or not, recognise and support the preservation of churches’ unique historic character.