Regarded as important cultural heritage, historic churches have been utilised over hundreds of years for worship and community benefit. Simple on/off space heating systems are installed in many churches to increase human comfort. However, the conservation of the important historic artefacts and artwork contained within may not have been fully considered. This review attempts to appraise the standards in place for artefacts and artwork. A consensus of 15–25 °C and 40–65% relative humidity is established as safe from the standards reviewed. Consideration is given to the environment within the church to understand if such exacting conditions can be met. The review finds that the conservation and preservation of artefacts and buildings are aligned goals, although striving to meet specified target ranges for artefact types is not fully compatible with historic churches. The stability of the internal environment is clearly an important factor in conservation and benefits human comfort expectations. Churches may contain microclimates throughout the building, complicating the use of target ranges for artefacts, artwork and comfort. The findings of this study can assist historic churches in managing the change, alteration or installation of heating systems.

As a result of difficulty meeting energy efficiency through fabric alteration, historic churches must focus on heating systems and operational strategy as key to reducing carbon emissions. Strategies can be defined as local or central heating. Local heating strives to heat occupants, while central heating aims to heat the building fabric and therefore the occupants. Each strategy requires a different approach to control and technology in response to priorities such as conservation, comfort and cost. This paper reviews current and emerging technologies in the context of church heating. The fuel source, heat generation technology and heat emitter are arranged in a matrix, with pairwise analysis undertaken to create weightings for each assessment criteria. The process of constructing the matrix and undertaking pairwise analysis using personas is discussed. The result is a ranking of fuels and technologies appropriate to the main priorities and individual preferences. Some desirable technologies are inherently more damaging to historic church environments due to invasive installation. These technologies score poorly when the aim is fabric preservation. Greener fuels, like biomass, may rank lower than fossil fuels, due in part to operational differences.