A CLEATOR MOOR church immortalised in a painting by LS Lowry is for sale – for a fraction of the cost of the artwork.

Legendary Manchester artist LS Lowry was instantly taken with the tiny Wath Brow Mission Church during a visit to Cumbria in 1948.

His painting is now worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and is thought to be held in a private collection, but the church itself still stands close to Cleator Moor.

But after almost 130 years as a place of worship, the 300-seat church has been deemed surplus to requirements by the Church of England.

It is to be sold at auction with a guide price of £60,000 to £70,000 – a fraction of the value of the painting itself.

Copeland council has indicated it is happy for the church to be redeveloped into a house or business, on one condition: that Lowry’s famous façade is left intact.

“It would make a beautiful house so long as you are willing to keep the front,” said auctioneer Colin West, of Auction House Cumbria, which will sell the church on June 18.

“Alternatively, maybe we will get a real Lowry enthusiast who just wants to keep it as it is. At the moment it still has the pulpit, the altar and all the pews.

“Everybody in the town knows the church and you get tourists come to look at it all the time because it is on the official Lowry trail.

“There are great views over the fells from the rear. It is absolutely beautiful. We are going to get a huge amount of interest.”

Lowry was best known for his industrial northern scenes peopled by “matchstick men” but he also painted a number of more rural scenes in Cumbria, where he went to visit his great friend Geoffrey Bennett, a one-time manager of the Cleator Moor Westminster Bank.

Recently the church has been suffering from dry rot and an unsafe bell tower – repairs would cost tens of thousands of pounds.