Buy a church and pay in bitcoin

The Rightmove website has published an advertisement for the sale of a church, which also accepts bitcoin as payment. It is the deconsecrated church of St Laurence, in Middleton One Row, County Durham in Great Britain. It has been converted into a seven-bedroom residence and is being sold for over £1 million. 

The announcement states that payment in bitcoin is also accepted, indicating explicitly:

“The vendor is willing to accept the cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) as a method of payment. The final sale price in BTC is to be agreed and confirmed with the vendor and will depend on the market valuation of BTC at the time of sale”. 

The church was built in 1871 and was designed by the architect JP Pritchett of nearby Darlington; it is made of sandstone with a Welsh slate roof. It has an octagonal stone spire rising from a tower, with an octagonal bell tower featuring clover-headed openings. In addition, it has several stained-glass windows and external buttresses that give it a certain grandeur. 

The website also includes a PDF brochure with the layout and several photographs of the church showing how it was converted into a luxury residence. 

The brochure itself also contains the logo and name of bitcoin in plain sight, suggesting that the seller might prefer this as a payment method, as there is no reference to the British pound in the brochure itself. 

Middleton One Row is a hamlet of the village of Middleton St George, near Yarm and Darlington, some 30 kilometres south of Durham in northern England. 

Although the initiative may seem curious, it’s not really that strange that bitcoin is accepted as a payment for the sale of luxury property. What is really surprising is the nature of this property because, although it is deconsecrated, from a strictly architectural point of view it remains a nineteenth-century church to all intents and purposes.