In England, thieves target parish churches for lead
Historic sites at risk as price of metal rises
EDMONDTHORPE, England - Thieves peeled long strips of lead from the roof of St. Michael and All Angels, until a barking dog sent them fleeing from this tiny Leicestershire village. But by then, they left a hole about 100-feet-square in the top of the 800-year-old church.
For centuries, people have stolen religious artifacts in Europe, including chunks of religious buildings, but Britain is in the midst of a crime wave that some specialists call the most concerted assault on churches since the religious conflicts of the Reformation.
Instead of doctrinal differences, the motivation is the near-record price that lead - the stuff many old church roofs are made of - is fetching on commodity markets.
"The local parish church has become a victim of international demand for metals," said Chris Pitt, a spokesman for Ecclesiastical, a company that specializes in insuring religious buildings and other heritage sites in Britain.
The price of lead on global markets has rocketed sevenfold in the past six years, largely because of rising demand from industrializing countries like China and India. Centuries ago, it was a popular building material; now it is sought after mainly as a source for batteries for vehicles and backup power systems for computer and mobile phone networks.
Because of booming demand, new mines are opening in South America and Asia, where deposits are plentiful. There also is a growing business in recycling lead, mainly from used batteries (where 75 percent of lead ends up).
Lead prices reached an all-time high of $3,900 a ton late last summer, mainly because of supply problems from mines in Australia, consumer demand in China for cars and motorbikes, and speculation by hedge fund managers on volatile commodities markets, said William Adams, a metals analyst at BaseMetals.com in London.
The price has pulled back since, trading at about $2,750 a ton, he said, but it could climb again on continuing supply problems and steady Chinese demand.
"Churches have become pretty savvy at protecting property inside their buildings, like the altar ware and money in boxes," said Pitt of Ecclesiastical, "but now the most valuable thing these churches have is being taken away piece by piece, and that is tearing away the very fabric of these buildings."
Ecclesiastical is raising its premiums for churches after paying claims last year totaling $18 million, mostly for thefts of lead from roofs, he said. Before 2005, such claims were almost unheard of.
A critical problem for Britain's churches is that many go unused for long periods of time, largely because of a decline in church-going. Services here in Edmondthorpe, for example, are sometimes held just six times a year.
In some cases, clergy and parishioners only discover roof thefts once rain pours into the building, damaging cherished items.
In Edmondthorpe, the damage will cost about $20,000 to repair.
Historical preservation rules require many churches to replace roofs with original building materials, including lead, despite its attractiveness to thieves and its cost. So parishioners fear thieves might return after repairs have been made.
"Whenever I get an early morning phone call these days, I think, 'Oh no, they've taken the roof again,' " said John Deave, 80, a retired barrister and a churchwarden at St. Guthlac's church in Stathern, another Leicestershire village whose church was vandalized in January.
Deave suspected thieves had shimmied up the drainpipe, peeled a 3-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.
Deave has put anticlimb paint on the drainpipes to make them slippery, marked the roof with SmartWater, a kind of indelible ink that can be used to identify stolen property, and pitched a thicket of signs around St. Guthlac's warning thieves to stay away.
After lead worth about $15,000 was taken from the roof of St. Peter and St. Paul, in Rutland, a county neighboring Leicestershire, Canon Stephen Evans installed a security system with outdoor cameras. Movement on the roof triggers warnings that are sent to up to six mobile phones. 