Our teams are currently on site at a former Methodist church and its associated buildings on Alexandra Road in Eccles, Manchester, carrying out asbestos removal, a full soft strip and the complete demolition of the structures. The buildings have stood redundant for some time, and the works are clearing the plot for a residential-led redevelopment.

Church demolition is never a simple job. These are old, heavily built structures with slate roofs, deep foundations, basements that nobody has been into for decades, and — almost without exception — asbestos containing materials introduced during later refurbishments. Add a neighbouring building that has to stay standing, houses either side of the boundary and a working car park in front, and you have a project where the planning matters far more than the plant. It is exactly the type of job a properly resourced demolition contractor is built for.

The Site: A Church Attached to a Building That Stays

The plot sits just off the main road through Eccles, with residential streets on two sides and a shared car park to the front. There is no compound to speak of and no back lane to work from, so everything — plant, skips, welfare, access — has to fit inside a boundary that is barely bigger than the buildings themselves.

The defining constraint, though, is the south-west elevation. The church is physically attached to a neighbouring building that is being retained and remains in use. That single fact drove the entire method: the roof has to be cut back and separated from the adjoining brickwork by hand before any machine goes near the structure, and the elevation nearest the retained building comes down course by course rather than mechanically.

Before any of that, the site perimeter went up in double-clipped Heras fencing with designated positions for the 40-yard roll-on roll-off bins agreed in advance, every vehicle movement in and out controlled by a banksman, and a photographic dilapidation survey of the pavement and road carried out so the condition of the public highway is recorded from day one. The client notified the local authority under Section 80 of the Building Act 1984 before works commenced.

Scope of Works

The instruction covers the whole job from first survey to a level, clear plot: asbestos removal, soft strip, hand demolition, mechanical demolition, grubbing up of slabs and foundations, and final site clearance.

Asbestos Removal Comes First — Always

Nothing structural happens until the asbestos is gone. The demolition and refurbishment survey identified both licensed and non-licensed asbestos containing materials across the buildings, and all of it is removed and cleared before the soft strip begins.

Non-licensed works are carried out by UKATA-trained operatives under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, using controlled wet removal with hand tools rather than breaking materials up, inside a barriered and signed exclusion zone. Waste is double-bagged in UN-approved red inner and clear outer bags and removed under serial-numbered hazardous waste consignment notes, with the site registered with the Environment Agency as a producer of hazardous waste. Licensed works are handled in-house under our HSE asbestos licence — one of the reasons clients come to us for buildings of this age rather than juggling two contractors and two programmes.

On a church of this vintage there is also the near-certainty of something turning up that was not on the survey. Our rule is simple and non-negotiable: work stops, the area is sealed, and nothing restarts until the material has been tested and cleared. One section of basement on this site could not be surveyed at all because access could not be gained, so it is being treated as suspect until proven otherwise.

We go into more detail in our guides on whether demolition contractors can remove asbestos prior to demolition and asbestos and hazardous material removal, and you can read more on our asbestos removal services page.

Soft Strip Back to Structure

With the asbestos clearance signed off, the soft strip out begins building by building, in an order set by the site manager so that one structure is always fully stripped before demolition starts on it.

Loose furniture, doors and door casings, skirtings, carpets, internal plasterboard walls, ceilings and remaining fixtures all come out and are segregated straight into separate 40-yard skips. Stripping soft before anything structural happens is not housekeeping — it is what keeps the brick, slate and concrete arisings clean enough to be recycled properly instead of being written off as mixed waste.

Hand Demolition to Protect the Building Next Door

This is the part of the job that takes the time, and the part that protects the client from a very expensive problem.

Full-height scaffolding was erected to all associated levels by a specialist scaffold contractor working alongside our teams. Roof tiles are stripped by hand from the ridge downwards in a diagonal route towards the gutter, using hand bars and reciprocating saws, with tiles passed down and stacked to pallets rather than dropped. Once a safe separation has been created between the remaining roof and the adjoining gable, the brickwork is taken down course by course, top to bottom — the reverse of the order it was built in.

The scaffold is struck progressively as the structure reduces, so it never stands proud of the building or free-standing. And the structure is never left in an unsafe condition overnight, at breaks, or at the end of a shift. That is a rule, not a preference.

Anyone can pull a building down. The skill is taking one down while the building glued to the side of it doesn't move a millimetre.

Mechanical Demolition

Where the structures are clear of the retained building, the work goes mechanical. A 20-tonne excavator fitted with a 360-degree hydraulic grab starts on the steel-clad building first, peeling the cladded roof off in sections and placing it to the ground floor to be processed into the correct recycling skips.

External walls are then reduced in one-square-metre sections, left to right and top to bottom, into the building's own footprint — never outwards. Timber floors and joists are lifted out individually into a dedicated timber skip, and remaining ground floor elevations are reduced the same way. Walls come down progressively so no single elevation is ever left standing at a height that would be unsafe, in line with the top-down sequence required by BS 6187.

Foundations, Basement and Final Clearance

Slabs and foundations to each building are grubbed up and removed from site. The older slate-roofed building has a basement, and the walls there are being reduced carefully with a hydraulic pecker in short durations, started only after 8am out of consideration for the neighbouring houses. The void is then backfilled level with the surrounding ground using compacted hardcore.

Hardcore leaves site on sheeted eight-wheel wagons, dampened down while loading. Once everything is off site, the excavator tracks over the footprint to leave a smooth, level finish ready for the next contractor — the same standard we apply on every commercial demolition and residential demolition project we hand over.

Reclaiming the Bricks, Not Just Recycling Them

Victorian and Edwardian church brick is worth saving, and on this project it is being saved. Each load of reclaimable brick goes into a dedicated 20-yard roll-on roll-off skip and off site for reuse, kept separate from the general hardcore stream from the start.

Everything else is segregated at source in the same way: timber, metals, plasterboard, slate, cabling and general arisings all go into their own bins, loaded by excavator and grab, and taken to a licensed waste transfer station with a waste transfer note raised for every load. Segregating on site rather than sorting later is the single biggest lever on recovery rates, and it is why we consistently divert around 96% of demolition waste from landfill.

On larger structural jobs we take it further with on-site concrete crushing, turning demolition concrete into recycled aggregate that stays on the plot instead of being carted off and replaced with virgin stone. Our post on clean demolition explains how we approach it.

Working Safely in a Residential Neighbourhood

The church may be empty, but the street is not. Houses back onto the boundary, the car park is in use, and there is a retained building attached to the structure we are taking down. Keeping the works invisible to everyone outside the fence line is part of the job, not an afterthought.

• Agreed working hours — Monday to Friday 07:30 to 16:00, Saturdays 09:00 to 13:00, with no working on Sundays or bank holidays.
• Percussive work restricted — pecker use on the basement walls in short durations and not before 8am, out of consideration for neighbouring houses.
• Dust suppression — water suppression at source whenever conditions call for it, reviewed daily by the site manager and stepped up during dry spells.
• Noise and vibration monitoring — sound-reduced plant where practicable, stationary plant sited away from sensitive boundaries, and monitoring against agreed levels so the response is proactive rather than reactive.
• Exclusion zones — established around active demolition areas and adjusted as the works progress, with emergency vehicle access never obstructed.
• Clean highway — every wagon controlled by a banksman, with any mud or debris drawn onto the road cleared immediately.

The Standards Behind the Work

All works on this project are carried out with reference to BS 6187:2011, the code of practice for full and partial demolition, under a site-specific demolition phase plan prepared in accordance with CDM 2015. Asbestos works follow CAR 2012 and current HSE guidance including HSG210. Plant and attachments are covered by PUWER 1998, inspected daily before use and taken out of service the moment a defect is found.

Every operative is inducted before starting, briefed daily on the risks and controls for the tasks in hand, and holds the relevant cards and certification for their role. We are ConstructionLine Gold and SSIP Acclaim accredited, with NEBOSH and IOSH qualified management and a full waste carriers licence. It is not glamorous, but it is the reason we have never had a prohibition notice served on us.

For the plain-English version of how projects like this are structured, our guides on strategic demolition planning, soft strip versus full demolition and how to choose a demolition contractor are a good place to start.

Why Churches and Older Buildings Need a Specialist

Church buildings are their own category of demolition problem. Construction records are usually long gone. Roof structures are heavy, high and often unstable once the covering comes off. Basements and crypts appear where drawings say there is solid ground. Asbestos was introduced in piecemeal refurbishments across decades. And the buildings are almost always in the middle of a community rather than on an industrial estate, which means the works are visible, audible and personal to the people living around them.

There is also the question of what deserves saving. Not every old building can or should be retained, but the materials in them frequently can be — and where a structure or a façade has genuine heritage value, that judgement needs making early, not once the machines are already on site. We wrote about that balance in heritage preservation: balancing demolition and conservation.

We have delivered this type of sensitive work across the country — including specialist demolition at the Grade II* listed Wedgwood Institute in Burslem, a former mill in Hyde, Manchester involving asbestos removal and soft strip, and the demolition of the swimming pool and sports centre at Alleyne's Academy in Stone. You can browse the full range on our projects page or see everything we offer under our services.

Demolition Contractors Across Manchester and the North West

Eccles and Salford sit squarely within our core operating area. We work constantly across Greater Manchester — from the former Simon House telecoms building in Wythenshawe to the former Soccer Village in Rochdale and a multi-million pound refurbishment at Stakehill Industrial Estate.

Beyond Manchester we cover Cheshire, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield, and we operate nationwide from our base in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. The full list is on our where we cover page.

Alongside commercial and heritage work we deliver industrial demolition, warehouse strip out, education sector demolition, public sector projects and a 24-hour emergency demolition response.

Family-run since 1982, and still doing it the same way: plan it properly, do it safely, and leave the site clean.

For a free site visit and fixed-price quotation, get in touch or call 0800 222 9772.