Full Version: Thieves Mine Church Roofs as Lead Prices Rise

Thieves Mine Church Roofs as Lead Prices Rise

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St. Michael and All Angels Church in the village of Edmondthorpe,Leicestershire, England, where thieves have cashed in on record leadprices by stripping a section of metal from the roof.

EDMONDTHORPE, England — Thieves peeled long strips of lead from theroof of St. Michael and All Angels, until a barking dog sent themfleeing from this tiny Leicestershire village. But by then, they hadleft a hole of about 100 square feet in the top of the 800-year-oldchurch.
For centuries, people have stolen religious artifacts in Europe,including chunks of religious buildings, but Britain is in the midst ofan accelerating crime wave that some experts call the most concertedassault on churches since the Reformation.
Instead of doctrinaldifferences, the motivation is the near record price that lead — thestuff many old church roofs are made of — is fetching on commoditymarkets.
“The local parish church has become a victim ofinternational demand for metals,” said Chris Pitt, a spokesman forEcclesiastical, a company that specializes in insuring religiousbuildings and other heritage sites in Britain.
Lead’s price onglobal markets has rocketed sevenfold in the last six years, largelybecause of rising demand from industrializing countries like China andIndia. Centuries ago, its malleability made it a popular buildingmaterial; now it is sought mainly for use in batteries for vehicles andbackup power systems for computer and mobile phone networks. It is alsoused to make bullets and shot, cables and paints.
Because ofbooming demand, new mines are opening in South America and Asia, wheredeposits are plentiful. There is also a growing business in recyclinglead, mainly from used batteries (where 75 percent of lead ends up) butalso scrap metal.
Lead prices reached a record of $3,900 a tonlate last summer mainly because of supply problems from mines inAustralia, consumer demand in China for cars and motorbikes, andspeculation by hedge fund managers on volatile commodities markets,said William Adams, a metals analyst at [url=http://basemetals.com/]BaseMetals.com[/url] in London.
Theprice has pulled back since, trading at about $2,750 a ton, he said,but it could climb again on continuing supply problems and steadyChinese demand.
One of the oddest consequences of thehistorically high price is that idyllic corners of Britain — a nationthat gave birth to the Industrial Revolution — are suddenly feeling thestrain of Asia’s industrialization.
“Churches have become prettysavvy at protecting property inside their buildings, such as the altarware and money in boxes,” said Mr. Pitt of Ecclesiastical, “but now themost valuable thing these churches have is being taken away piece bypiece, and that is tearing away the very fabric of these buildings.”
Ecclesiasticalis raising its premiums for churches after paying out claims last yeartotaling £9 million ($18 million), mostly for thefts of lead fromroofs, he said. Before 2005, such claims were almost unheard-of.
Acrucial problem for Britain’s churches is that many go unused for longperiods of time, largely because of a decline in churchgoing. Serviceshere in Edmondthorpe, for example, are often held just six times a year.
Insome cases, clergy members and parishioners discover roof thefts onlyonce rain pours into the building, damaging cherished items like carvedwooden screens and ancient organs. The thefts can lead to thousands ofpounds of structural damage, too.
In Edmondthorpe, the damage will cost £10,000 ($20,000) to repair.
“It’sruthless how they do it,” said Nigel Peters, an inspector with theLeicestershire constabulary, describing lead thefts at Edmondthorpe andseven other local churches. “It’s such a skill to lay down the lead,and then it is literally just ripped away.”
Mr. Peters said hisforce had carried out raids on two local scrap metal dealers but hadfound no evidence of wrongdoing. He said no arrests had been made inconnection with thefts in his part of the county.
Historicalpreservation rules require many churches to replace roofs with originalbuilding materials, including lead, despite its attractiveness tothieves and its cost. Many fear thieves will return after the repairs.
“WheneverI get an early morning phone call these days, I think, ‘Oh no, they’vetaken the roof again,’ ” said John Deave, 80, a retired barrister and achurchwarden at St. Guthlac’s Church in Stathern, anotherLeicestershire village, where the church was vandalized in January.


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Hazel Thompson for The International Herald Tribune
Nothing remains of the lead that once covered a 10-foot by 10-footsection of the roof over the 800-year-old St. Michael and All AngelsChurch in the village of Edmondthorpe, Leicestershire, England,allowing rain to drip through the wooden roof planks.

Mr. Deave suspected that thieves had climbed up the drainpipe, peeled a three-foot-wide strip from the roof, and threw their haul down into the churchyard, where they left a piece of metal and an indentation in the grass, before driving away.

Insurance paid most of the £2,300 bill to fix the roof. But the church had to pay the £500 deductible with parishioners’ money and reserves from tiny “peppercorn rents” still collected on nearby lands.

Mr. Deave has put special paint on the drainpipes to make them slippery to would-be climbers; has marked the roof with SmartWater, a kind of indelible ink that can be used to identify stolen property; and has pitched a thicket of signs around St. Guthlac’s warning thieves to stay away.

He wanted to put a bright light on the roof as an additional security measure but neighbors opposed the move.

Some churches in larger and more prosperous towns have upgraded their internal security, little changed since medieval times, to systems that are distinctly 21st century.

After lead worth £7,500 was taken from the roof of St. Peter & St. Paul, in Rutland, a county neighboring Leicestershire, the church canon, Stephen Evans, installed a security system with outdoor cameras. Movement on the roof sets off warnings that are sent to up to six mobile phones.

For churches with less money, the introduction of more rudimentary deterrents may be inevitable.

“Nobody likes to think of barbed wire or that kind of thing on these buildings, but churches seriously have to look at that,” said Tom Bates, a former insurance manager in the village of Waltham-on-the-Wolds, where lead was removed from the church of St. Mary Magdalene late last year.

“Ultimately insurance companies will say, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” he said.

At St. Michael and All Angels in Edmondthorpe, Barbara Coulson, a lay minister, went ahead with a Good Friday service even after the theft. Thirty-six people attended as wintry gusts flapped the blue plastic covering the hole in the roof.

Ms. Coulson expected the roof to be repaired soon and said new security measures would be put in place.

Still, she said, churches like hers would remain vulnerable, in part because respect for faith traditions is often too weak to offset the temptation of cashing in on global markets.

“We increasingly seem to live in a world where the question ‘Is nothing sacred?’ so easily springs to mind,” she said.