For 35 years, Mount St Mary’s Church sat in silence on its ridge above Richmond Hill, its nave open to the sky, its marble altar smashed to rubble, its stained-glass windows behind protective screens. Urban explorers photographed its decay with something between reverence and grief. The Victorian Society named it a heritage building at risk. Then, in 2024, scaffolding went up and the sound of power tools replaced the wind. Today, the Grade II*-listed church – once the spiritual heart of Leeds’ Irish immigrant community and known locally as “The Famine Church” – is mid-transformation into 175 luxury apartments in what is arguably the most architecturally ambitious residential conversion the city has seen in decades. (We first covered this story in December 2024, when the original vision for the project was laid out.)
The project, branded as The Mount, is being delivered by developer Redwing Properties and built by Leeds-based S9 Construction, with the architectural vision led by local practice Den Architecture. As of August 2025, construction is well advanced: façade work is underway on Block A, steelwork is being installed on Block B, and completion is targeted for 2026. Prices start from approximately £172,620, with early-bird investors reportedly saving up to £48,370 on day one.
A Church Born from Famine and Faith
Mount St Mary’s story begins in 1851, when the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate arrived in Leeds to minister to the city’s growing Irish Catholic population. Many had fled the Great Irish Famine and settled in the Richmond Hill area, then a densely packed working-class district on Leeds’ eastern fringe. Fr. Crowe OMI, the mission’s first priest, raised funds for a site and the church was affectionately nicknamed “The Famine Church” because it was built during the recovery from mass starvation – seen by survivors as a sign of hope.
The foundation stone was laid on 24 May 1853 by the Bishop of Beverley, John Briggs. The architect was Joseph Hansom, the York-born designer best known for inventing the hansom cab and for Plymouth Cathedral. But the church’s most celebrated connection is to the Pugin dynasty. Edward Pugin, son of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin – the man whose Gothic Revival vision shaped the interiors of the Houses of Parliament and the clock tower housing Big Ben – designed the chancel and transepts. Edward Pugin was a partner in Hansom’s firm from 1862 to 1863, and when the transepts were completed, the entire church opened on 13 September 1866 with the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Manning, presiding.
The building was vast by any measure: 165 feet long, 100 feet wide, 85 feet tall, with a nave width of 60 feet. Its brick exterior, steep slated roof, pointed arches, rose windows, and geometric tracery placed it firmly in the Gothic Revival canon alongside St Walburge in Preston and the Palace of Westminster itself. For nearly 140 years, it served the community. Between 1863 and 1953, its adjacent orphanage housed more than 3,000 children. A tower was planned – a fund was started in 1916 – but the First World War intervened, and the spire that was meant to crown Richmond Hill was never built.
Dereliction, Discovery, and Decades of Delay
The post-war decades hollowed out Mount St Mary’s congregation. Urban renewal pushed families to new housing in Osmondthorpe; the parish shrank from 6,000 to 790. By 1989, with maintenance costs estimated at £1.5 million, the Oblates withdrew and the church was deconsecrated. It was sold to Sanctuary Housing Trust in 1996 for a nominal sum and simply left. For over three decades, the building deteriorated. The marble altar was vandalised. Scaffolding appeared and disappeared. The Victorian Society repeatedly flagged it as at risk.
What made the conversion uniquely complicated was what lay beneath. During renovation work in 1953, an old coal mine was discovered directly under the church. Leeds City Council later confirmed, in a 2007 study, that more than one mine exists at three different levels, dating from the late 1600s to 1877. S9 Construction’s scope includes complex civil engineering work – grouting of worked coal seams and mine shafts – alongside the architectural restoration. It is a project that required not just aesthetic sensitivity but geological expertise.
The Design: Dialogue Between Centuries
Den Architecture’s approach is one of deliberate tension. The plan retains the most significant elements of the original church – the nave, the stained-glass windows (by Hardman & Co.), the ornate stone carvings, the vaulted ceilings – while inserting a five-storey residential extension that replaces roughly half of the demolished structure. A new “feature window” on the west gable is designed to create a “lantern effect” at night, projecting the church’s presence onto the surrounding streetscape.
The smashed altar, rather than being discarded, will be restored and repurposed as a communal workspace for residents – a literal reconstitution of the building’s symbolic centre. The original stained-glass windows, which survived behind protective screens, are being integrated into the apartment interiors. High ceilings, panoramic views across the Leeds skyline, and landscaped communal gardens complete the residential vision.
As Jake Wright of Den Architecture noted in an August 2025 project update, “The Grade II Listed church, which has stood empty for over 30 years, is being brought back to life as part of an ambitious residential development. Once complete, the scheme will deliver 175 much-needed apartments, combining sensitive restoration with contemporary design.”
The engineering challenges are considerable. S9 Construction, working on a design-and-build contract valued at £12.9 million for Phase 1 and £9.4 million for Phase 2 over 86 weeks, has described the project as involving “part-restoration of Grade 2 listed Church Building; complex civil engineering including grouting of worked coal seams and mine shafts; a high specification throughout; extensive demolition and alteration works including temporary works; and a fast-track fit-out programme.”
Situated in Leeds’ New Cultural Quarter
The Mount’s location amplifies its significance. It sits on the southern edge of the SOYO Cultural Quarter, a £300 million mixed-use development by Caddick Developments that is reshaping the Quarry Hill area. SOYO’s first two phases – Moda New York Square (551 apartments, opened 2022) and Madison East/Mercer West (331 apartments) – are complete. The final phase, including 291 student bedrooms in Block D, is scheduled for completion ahead of the 2027–2028 academic year.
SOYO neighbours Leeds Playhouse, Leeds Conservatoire, BBC Studios, and Northern Ballet. The Mount, perched on its elevated position just east of the cultural quarter, becomes a visible architectural counterpoint – a Victorian Gothic relic amid glass and steel. It is, in effect, the oldest building in the newest neighbourhood.
Adaptive Reuse as National Precedent
The Mount arrives at a moment when adaptive reuse of historic buildings is gaining policy traction. In September 2024, Historic England and Deloitte published Heritage Works for Housing, a guide aimed at developers considering conversion of vacant heritage properties. The report argues that converting historic buildings makes economic, social, and environmental sense: properties near listed buildings can command premiums of up to 9%, and reusing existing structures reduces embodied carbon compared with demolition and new build.
The RIBA Reinvention Award, now in its third year, shortlisted four adaptive reuse projects in 2025, including the social and fabric transformation of a derelict church in Kent. In Sheerness, the Dockyard Church – designed by Hugh Broughton Architects – won acclaim for integrating contemporary interventions within historic fabric while maintaining public accessibility. Matthew McKeague, chief executive of the Architectural Heritage Fund, wrote that “churches, in particular, should not be preserved in aspic. They were built for people, and so it is right that they find new purpose when they fall into disrepair.”
The UK government’s target of 1.5 million new homes over five years has further intensified interest in heritage conversion as a supply mechanism. Yet developers – particularly small and medium-sized firms – remain cautious, deterred by perceived hidden costs and labyrinthine planning regulations. The Mount, with its coal mines, its Grade II* listing, and its partial demolition, is precisely the kind of project that tests the limits of what adaptive reuse can deliver. London has already explored this territory: Mercato Metropolitano’s transformation of St Mark’s Church into a food hall offered one model for repurposing sacred space. The Mount attempts something structurally more radical – domesticating the nave itself.
What It Means for Leeds
For Leeds, the project carries emotional weight as well as architectural ambition. Mount St Mary’s was built by famine survivors and served their descendants for generations. Its dereliction was a source of local anger. Its conversion, while inevitably commercialised through off-plan sales and investment projections, restores the building to active use and preserves its architectural language for a new generation.
The question that haunts every church conversion – how to honour sacred space while filling it with domestic life – finds its answer here in the decision to keep the altar at the building’s heart, to frame the stained glass within living rooms, to let the Gothic arches rise above kitchen islands and beds. The Mount is not a preservation museum. It is a house, in the oldest sense, with people living inside the bones of something they did not build.
As Leeds continues its rapid growth as one of the UK’s most dynamic cities – with the SOYO quarter, the South Bank regeneration, and HS2 connections on the horizon – projects like The Mount will increasingly define what urban heritage means. Not a frozen relic, but a living negotiation between what was and what comes next.
Construction images: Den Architecture; S9 Construction. Historical sources: Wikipedia, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Leeds City Council conservation appraisal, Yorkshire Evening Post, Place Yorkshire.
