Experience Northumberland’s Dark Skies at Warksburn Old Church
As the autumn deepens and the nights stretch out, a spectacular natural show begins in Northumberland. The fading light brings with it the most pristine, velvet-black skies in England – perfect for stargazing on clear nights. Warksburn Old Church, on the boundary of the Northumberland International Dark Sky Park, is officially Dark Skies Friendly, making it an ideal luxury base for stargazers and romantics alike.
Enjoy your around the statement ceramic and glass dining table, then step out into your private garden, to be instantly met by the humbling, glittering theatre of the Milky Way. You don’t need to travel far; the natural above the fields around Wark give Warksburn Old Church a front-row seat to the cosmos.
For those wishing to explore further into deep space, you have world-class facilities right on your doorstep. Just a short drive away is the renowned Kielder Observatory, offering a comprehensive programme of events under some of the darkest skies in Europe. Closer still, you could visit Battlesteads Observatory, which is literally next door in Wark, providing a genuinely convenient and expert stargazing experience.
And if the Northumbrian sky decides not to play ball? No problem. You can settle in for a cosy night in, enjoy the UHD infotainment system, pour a glass of wine, and luxuriate in the profound peace and quiet inside one of the best insulated building in the UK.
The best part? No matter how long you spend outside marveling at the constellations, you can be guaranteed the warmest welcome back. Although the crisp autumn air can be chilly, the moment you step back across the threshold into Warksburn Old Church, you are enveloped in the serene, gentle warmth of a truly sustainable home.
This three-bedroom, Net Zero conversion is Passivhaus certified, meaning the internal climate is guaranteed to be comfortable and draught-free, regardless of the temperature outside. You can hang up your coat and immediately feel cosy, knowing that your luxury holiday is also one of the world’s most eco-friendly.
Book your autumn or winter break at Warksburn Old Church via our Booking Page, and don’t forget to check our latest Deals Page for special offers. Discover the perfect blend of natural spectacle, Net Zero living, and five-star luxury.
We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded the prestigious Superhost status for our listing on Airbnb. This new accolade celebrates the consistently high standards of service and hospitality we provide, affirming our dedication to delivering a seamless, luxury experience for every guest.
Elevating the Guest Experience
The Superhost designation is not easily earned; it requires meeting and maintaining strict criteria based on guest feedback, including consistently high ratings, excellent response times to enquiries, and never cancelling guest reservations. For guests of Warksburn Old Church, this status provides extra assurance, reinforcing their confidence in booking a stay of exceptional quality at the world’s only Passivhaus-certified church-to-home conversion.
Recognition for Both Property and Host
Achieving Superhost status is the perfect complement to the property’s existing top-tier accolades. Warksburn Old Church is already recognised on Airbnb for its exquisite interiors and high-end amenities by featuring in both the exclusive Luxe and Design categories. To be designated a Superhost means the recognition now extends beyond the magnificent Net Zero building – which holds Passivhaus certification and the Green Tourism Gold award – to the five-star service provided by the hosts themselves.
Top Class Hospitality
Our hospitality is driven by the same commitment to quality which inspired us to create this extraordinary property. A three-bedroom, six-guest luxury holiday rental equipped with everything for a perfect stay, including individually designed en-suite bathrooms, a high-end kitchen, and a private garden, which is also one of the most energy efficient buildings in the UK. We strive to ensure that every detail contributes to a genuinely memorable experience when you stay with us, surrounded by the history and natural beauty of rural Northumberland, close to Hadrian’s Wall, Hexham, Corbridge, Kielder Forest & Water, the International Dark Skies Park and Northumberland National Park.
Book Your Top-Rated Stay
If you are seeking a luxury holiday rental that blends heritage architecture with modern, Passivhaus-certified sustainability, and is backed by a proven track record of outstanding service, we invite you to book your stay on Airbnb here.
Forget the Forecast: Experience the Warmest Winter Holiday in Britain
The mercury is dropping, the nights are drawing in, and that familiar dread is creeping in: the winter energy bill. We all know the drill – layer up, brave the chill indoors, and wince every time the central heating kicks on. But what if there was another way? A way to truly embrace winter, snug and warm, without breaking the bank?
Imagine stepping into a home where the warmth isn’t a battle against the elements, but a constant, gentle embrace. A place where you can walk around in shirtsleeves in January, not because you’ve cranked the thermostat to eleven, but because the house itself is designed to be incredibly warm and efficient.
This isn’t a futuristic fantasy; it’s the reality of a Passivhaus, and you can experience it at Warksburn Old Church in beautiful rural Northumberland, where a stunning contemporary renovation of an 1875 Victorian church blends cutting-edge Net Zero technology, with exquisite interior design and respectful conservation of the building’s exceptional heritage features.
Low energy luxury
“Passivhaus” (or “Passive House”) is the most rigorous standard for ultra-low energy buildings, meaning they require little to no energy for heating. Think exceptional insulation, airtight construction, and a clever heat recovery ventilation system.
The upshot? A luxury holiday rental that stays wonderfully warm in winter with minimal energy input. Enjoy your break near Hadrian’s Wall and the International Dark Skies Park without worrying about energy consumption. Warksburn Old Church is the world’s only Passivhaus-certified church-to-home conversion, demonstrating a unique blend of heritage and Net Zero performance. It is a certified EnerPHit Retrofit and holds a Green Tourism Gold award, plus you get an added ‘eco-bonus’: there’s complimentary EV charging for the duration of your stay.
Compare the cost of heating
If you stayed at home, in a typical large-to-medium UK home, for a typical winter month, and ran the heating to maintain a comfortable temperature for your family, you would be faced with a substantial bill of at least £200, and often far higher, just to heat the place.
When you stay at Warksburn Old Church, by contrast, you’ll be living in a Net Zero property that actually functions a small-scale power station. The building has a negative annual energy cost of around minus £500 per year: it makes more money from exporting power generated by its onsite renewables and stored in its batteries than it pays to import power from the grid. So, during the month of your stay, you’ll be experiencing an ultra-efficient building that’s actually making money on energy , as opposed to costing hundreds of pounds. And all the energy you’ll be using during your stay comes from zero carbon generation, so you’ll contributing to the several tonnes of CO2 savings WOC delivers every year.
‘Test drive’ life in a low energy home
So, why shiver your way through another winter when you could be snug, saving money, and gaining inspiration for a warmer, more sustainable future? Why not experience the luxury (and not to mention the warmth), of an entire month in a Passivhaus-certified, Airbnb Luxe holiday home. Perhaps most importantly, you’ll experience first hand how ultra low carbon living can be achieved, and perhaps be inspired to upgrade the energy efficiency of your own home. Think of it as a an opportunity to ‘try before you buy’, if you like.
If you want to know more, why not watch the TV documentary showing how this remarkable place was built: Series 2, Episode 3 Derelict Rescue. And whilst you’re here, Alan and Anne, the owners would be happy to give you a ‘behind the scenes’ tour of the building to explain all the tech, and to share the practical insights and ‘tips and tricks’ they learned when delivering this award-winning project.
Picture here: A beautiful interior shot of Warksburn Old Church, dressed for Christmas, perhaps with luxurious textiles, warm lighting and decorations.
Winter Warmth Offers: Your Passivhaus Experience
This January, book a long-term stay at Warksburn Old Church – one of the most energy-efficient buildings in Britain – and experience the Passivhaus standard first-hand. As an incidental benefit, you can keep your heating at home turned down to frost-protection level, saving you money while you enjoy your luxury break.
All long-term stays attract an additional10% discount off the base price if you pay in full at the time of booking, making your reservation on a non-refundable, non-cancellable basis.
Two Weeks of Winter Warmth (January 5th – 18th)
Dates: Check In 5th January, Check Out 18th January 2026
We were delighted to welcome our local MP, Joe Morris, Member of Parliament for Hexham, for a fact-finding visit to Warksburn Old Church today, 24 September 2025.
Joe was interested in exploring how the energy saving technologies pioneered here, during the world’s first Passivhaus-certified church conversion, can be more broadly applied in UK housing to slash both energy bills and carbon emissions.
As we discussed during Joe’s visit, if it’s possible to turn a cold, damp and draughty Victorian building into one of the most energy efficient buildings in the UK, it’s going to be much easier to deliver new build housing to a similar standard. Warksburn Old Church, with its negative annual energy bill and 100% green power, proves that that ‘Zero Energy Cost, Zero Energy Carbon (“2ZEC”) housing is a buildable reality.
Following Joe’s visit we look forward to sharing best practice with others in Westminster and Whitehall developing policy around some of the biggest challenges of the Net Zero Transition, including the decarbonisation of domestic heating, combining smart energy tariffs with local storage, and radical updating of building standards.
We’re delighted to launch a dedicated page for offers, deals and promotions are Warksburn Old Church. For Autumn 2025, we’re launching with some really great deals for extended stays.
Thanks to Olivia Sheed for her great article about Warksburn Old Church on the ‘Chronicle Live’ website and its associated social media channels. Entitled, “this unique Northumberland holiday home isn’t what it seems at first glance,” the article goes on to explain that the property is “like nothing you’ve ever seen before, with luxury at an affordable price.”
The article links readers who might be interested in booking a stay direct to our Airbnb listing, where Warksburn Old Church appears in the extremely rare, and highly demanding, “Airbnb Luxe” category which features only “Extraordinary homes, vetted for quality.”
In fact, at the time of writing this post, in mid-August 2025, using the ‘Luxe’ filter to perform a search on the Airbnb platform (which lists over 8.2 million properties worldwide) returns only 82 Luxe properties in the whole of England and Wales, with Warksburn Old Church being the only Airbnb Luxe property in all of Northumberland. Follow this link to find out more about Airbnb Luxe: a truly stunning collection of amazing places to stay, in which we’re exceptionally proud to feature.
Outstanding guest feedback is key requirement, not only for our listing in the Luxe and Guest Favourite categories on Airbnb, but also in every aspect of our business. So we’re delighted with the fantastic reviews which guests have left for us. Why not check out our guest reviews on Airbnb here. Our particular favourites include:
Wow wow wow what can you say about Anne and Alan’s fantastic holiday let. Not to sure if there are enough superlatives in the dictionary to describe the workmanship and detail that has been put into this property.
What a fantastic place to stay! A truly memorable building if you’re looking for somewhere special to holiday to.
What a wonderful place, absolutely immaculate. Every detail had been thought through which made our stay so easy and enjoyable.
Guests booking direct on our website have left 100% 5-star reviews, which can been found here. We look forward to welcoming you to our beautiful corner of rural Northumberland to experience Warksburn Old church for yourself.
A big thank you to Chayley, Tabitha and Chris for their thoughtful and eloquent report on their recent stay at Warksburn Old Church. It was great for Anne and I to be able to discuss the Passivhaus fundamentals of the building in depth with such an expert group. And we’re really happy to learn they and their partners enjoyed their stay.
As Chayley puts it, “being able to visit Passivhaus projects is an important way for would-be clients and selfbuilders to see and feel the benefits of Passivhaus firsthand […] For those considering a Passivhaus selfbuild, holiday accommodation, like Warksburn Old Church, offers a brilliant chance to experience Passivhaus comfort, efficiency, peacefulness, and air quality firsthand.”
If you’d like to experience a unique combination of luxury and low carbon living in a heritage building rebuilt to Passivhaus standards, you can book a stay here.
Warksburn Old Church Marks 150th Anniversary, Linking 19th Century Clean Energy Visionary to 21st Century Low Carbon Living.
Warksburn Old Church, a luxury Net Zero guest accommodation created by converting a former Presbyterian church in rural Northumberland, celebrated a remarkable double milestone on May 27, 2025. A formal reopening event marked precisely 150 years to the day since the building’s original opening, funded by a pioneering 19th Century clean energy visionary. The reopening event also marked the completion of the building’s transformation into a globally unique landmark: the first church-to-home conversion in the world certified to the ultra-demanding Passivhaus standard.
Commissioned by Wark residents Drs Anne and Alan James, designed by Northumberland-based Insight Architectural Design, advised by Passivhaus experts Ecospheric and built with extraordinary attention to detail by local builder David Reed, Warksburn Old Church is now one of the most energy efficient buildings in Europe, generating more energy from renewables than it uses over the course of a year.
The original church, located in Wark-on-Tyne just north of Hadrian’s Wall, opened on May 27, 1875. Its construction was funded by Sir George Barclay Bruce, a prominent Newcastle-born railway engineer, who began his career apprenticed to Robert Stephenson, the engineering colossus whose ‘Rocket’ locomotive ignited the coal-powered Industrial Revolution.
Sir George Barclay Bruce – Portrait by kind permission of Westminster College Cambridge
Sir George became President of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), to whom he delivered a remarkably prescient Presidential Address in 1887. At the height of the carbon-intensive Steam Age, he envisioned a future powered by clean electricity – from sources like wind, streams, and tides, plus the energy storage technologies which ideally complement renewable generation – anticipating today’s Net Zero Carbon technologies by over a century.
The highlight of the event was the unveiling of a Victorian portrait of Sir George Barclay Bruce by Meshi Taka, today’s Chair of the North East Region of the Institution of Civil Engineers. This act symbolised the continuity between Sir George’s pioneering vision of sustainable energy and its realisation in the very building he funded.
Eminent railway engineer Clive Burrows, Group Engineering Director First Group, marked the historic connection to Sir George, given added significance by 2025 also marking the 200th anniversary of the railways.
Neil Carney, Head of Destination at Visit Northumberland also attended, and kindly highlighted Warksburn Old Church as a showcase of the very highest standards of sustainability in visitor accommodation.
Thanks also to Jules Harrison ITV Tyne Tees News for covering the event and to Dave Nells for filming the piece. We’ll post the link to their feature on itvX when it goes live. Meanwhile, here’s a few ‘making of’ photos…
Our thanks also go to the Institution of Civil Engineers for spreading the word, and to Visit Northumberland for featuring the event in their partner newsletter and on their socials.
Quotes
Sir George Barclay Bruce said (in his Presidential Address to the ICE on 08 November 1887):
“Electricity is to us now light, heat, and power. Our streets and beacons shine with it, it signs and speaks for us around the world, across the desert, and beneath the ocean. When we shall have learnt the way of storing up in a more efficient and financially successful manner, the unemployed forces of nature such as the winds and streams and tides, which can be so readily converted into electrical energy at trifling cost, then will it become a factor in the world’s life compared with which the present is as nothing.”
These words are believed to be the world’s first documented reference to the renewable generation and storage of electricity.
Meshi Taka, North East Regional Chair, Institution of Civil Engineers, CEng FICE MWES said: “I am delighted to represent the Institution of Civil Engineers at the formal reopening of Warksburn Old Church. Today is genuinely a once-in-a-century opportunity to celebrate the link back Sir George Barclay Bruce, whose 1887 Presidential Address to my own Institution is truly remarkable for its vision of the renewable generation and storage of electricity. And it’s all the more remarkable that Anne and Alan have brought his vision to life, by creating an ultra-efficient building incorporating the very technologies which Sir George foresaw, well over a Century ago. This really is history coming full circle. The reborn Warksburn Old Church is an important and significant building. Not only is its radical energy efficiency a demonstration that Net Zero is an achievable reality in 2025, but it is also a fitting tribute to the remarkable foresight of my illustrious ICE forebear, Sir George Barclay Bruce. In 1875 he funded this building. In 1887 he envisioned zero carbon energy. In 2025, the renovation of his building makes his vision a reality. The Institution of Civil Engineers continues to improve lives by ensuring the world has the engineering capacity and infrastructure systems it needs to enable our planet and our people to thrive.”
Clive Burrows, Group Engineering Director, First Group, FREng BSc CEng FIET FIMechE FIRSE FCILT said: “As a railway engineer, it is a pleasure to be stood today exactly where one of the great early railway engineers, George Barclay Bruce, was standing 150 years ago to the day. With 2025 also marking the 200th anniversary of railways, it is remarkable that Sir George Barclay Bruce links us back directly to George and Robert Stephenson, the great pioneers of the Railway Age. For me, history is coming full circle when today’s electrically-powered trains cross the Royal Border Bridge in Berwick-on-Tweed: it was none other than Robert Stephenson who appointed George Barclay Bruce as Engineer in Charge of that magnificent structure. It’s also notable that trains incorporating the energy storage batteries Barclay Bruce envisioned are now entering service on Britain’s railways. Today we’re marking the ultra low carbon transformation of a much smaller building than the Royal Border Bridge, but one which Barclay Bruce himself funded in 1875. It is inspiring to think that he, the very first engineer to envision the clean energy technologies now embodied in Warksburn Old Church, personally knew George and Robert Stephenson. Truly a link to the past as we celebrate the reopening of a building which now clearly shows the way to a sustainable future.”
Neil Carney, Head of Destination at Visit Northumberland, said: “Warksburn Old Church is a magnificent asset for the Northumberland visitor economy, and a real showcase of how the very highest standards of sustainability can be delivered in accommodation of the utmost quality. As the rare and highly demanding Green Tourism Gold Award they achieved at the first attempt shows, Anne and Alan James have proved that it is possible to combine ultra low energy consumption with ultra high levels of comfort, creating stylish, attractive and welcoming visitor accommodation. It is all the more remarkable that they have delivered this whilst preserving the magnificent stained glass and other heritage features of the original Victorian building. Northumberland and the wider North East can be truly proud that the first church conversion in the world to achieve Passivhaus certification is in Wark, and we can also celebrate the historical connection back to the ‘Geordie Genius’, Sir George Barclay Bruce, who, well over a Century ago, first envisioned the clean energy technologies now incorporated into this extraordinary and exemplary property.”
Dr Alan James said: “It is great that we now have the 21st Century Net Zero technologies which enable us to realise Sir George Barclay Bruce’s 19th Century vision of clean energy, and to achieve that by radically updating the very building he funded 150 years ago. It is astonishing that he was able to foresee zero carbon energy at the height of the Age of Coal. Now we hope that our transformation of the Victorian church he constructed, into an energy efficient home for the Age of Renewables, will inspire guests staying here along their own journey to Net Zero.”
Dr Anne James said: “We were inspired by the history of this building to create a new kind of place when we renovated Warksburn Old Church. Of course, my key design objective was to build a stylish and welcoming home for guests to enjoy whilst they’re visiting our wonderful corner of rural Northumberland, but also to create a place with purpose. A place that might inspire some of our guests to ‘take the plunge’ with transforming the way their own homes use energy. For me, it was not only about respecting and conserving the historic 19th Century building, but letting its history inspire our 21st Century renovation.
We’re delighted that Warksburn Old Church is one the properties featured in Host Unusual’s “Prepare To Be Amazed” selection of “Retreats with Unique Innovations and Cutting-Edge Tech.” Read the article here
