Ornate Birmingham church sold for over £1.5m in competitive Bond Wolfe auction

An ornate former Methodist church in an inner city Birmingham suburb has been sold for a small fortune of more than £1.5m at Bond Wolfe’s latest auction.

The Saltley Methodist Church at 140 Alum Rock Road was built more than 100 years ago and had a guide price of £350,000+ in the livestreamed event on Thursday 24 October.

But frenzied bidding from a range of investors keen to develop the property resulted in the hammer coming down at well over four times that guide price at an incredible £1,510,000.

Ian Tudor, commercial auction director at Bond Wolfe, said: “This attractive church building, with its tall, ornate frontage, really captured the attention of exited bidders at our auction.

“The building was erected in the early 1900s and occupies a prominent position fronting Alum Rock Road between its junctions with Ellesmere Road and Edmund Road.

“This eye-catching former church would obviously make a great base for all sorts of developments subject to planning permission, from apartments to offices, and from a bar-restaurant to other commercial uses.

“We don’t know exactly what the purchaser has in mind at this stage, as the sale now needs to go through to completion stage, but at the price it was bought for there will obviously be a clear intention in mind.”

The two-storey building has an entrance lobby, toilets, minister's room, worship hall, offices and meeting rooms on the ground floor, while upstairs is a meeting area, side galleries, organ gallery, rear rooms and store.

The building stands on a rectangular shaped site with a frontage of some 70 feet and a site depth of around 100 feet, 4,557 sq ft of space on the ground floor and 3,228 sq ft upstairs.