The fourth in our series on repurposed religious buildings that have retained their spiritual aura features a forbidding Gothic pile in a magnificent location.

It’s 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning and I am in church, submerged in deep and meaningful thoughts about God, the universe and everything. In fact I’m submerged in more ways than one, since I’m in water, floating on my back, up and down the nave of this handsome Pugin place of worship. Or I should say: former place of worship, since what was once the beating heart of a Benedictine monastery is now a swimming pool. It seems apt in its way that a place of contemplation and spiritual connection should have been reconfigured as a place dedicated to a different kind of spiritual pursuit – a spa, no less. And God, presumably, is as happy with prayers offered from a watery nave as a pew-filled one.

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