- Property investor Samuel Leeds made a £225,000 cash offer for Darlaston Methodist Church in Walsall
- He later raised his bid to £250,000 because of competing interest
- He says he will hand the building rent-free to a congregation willing to worship there
- Around 16 developers were reported to be interested in the boarded-up site
A boarded-up Methodist church in the Black Country has become the centre of an unusual bidding contest. Samuel Leeds, a 34-year-old property developer who grew up in the Walsall area, told the Express & Star in March 2026 that he had put down a cash offer of £225,000, the listed asking price, for Darlaston Methodist Church, which had been closed and was expected to be sold to developers for conversion.
Leeds said he was not planning to redevelop it himself. Instead, he intends to buy the freehold and offer the building “completely free of charge, zero rent, to a church that is prepared to worship Jesus here”. According to the paper, around 16 developers had shown interest in the property, and Leeds subsequently increased his offer to £250,000 to stay in the running.
“I just can’t have a building that was built to glorify Jesus being turned into something to just make profit,” he said. Leeds, who attended a Christian school in Caldmore and lived in Bloxwich, described the site as just 10 minutes from where he grew up. He acknowledged the commercial logic of conversions: “I’m a developer myself, so I do totally get it, but I just thought that if we’re not careful, we’re going to end up with no churches.”
The Express & Star reported that he hoped to partner with an African church to run the building, and that plans included a soup kitchen and weekly services for homeless people. Separately, he said he was converting another investment property into a “rebuild-your-life” centre for homeless people in Walsall. The paper put the number of churches sold to developers across England at roughly 3,500, with few remaining in use as places of worship.
For Caribbean-heritage and African-led congregations in Walsall, Wolverhampton and Birmingham, many of which have spent decades renting school halls or saving for a building of their own, the story shows how quickly redundant chapels go to the open market, and how rarely they return to worship. For Jamaican churches at home and abroad, it is also a reminder that buildings are often lost not through scandal but through shrinking congregations and repair bills, and that a clear plan for succession and ownership matters long before the “For Sale” sign goes up.
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