This is one of 12 chapels he has bought across the south Wales valleys over the past decade, spending roughly £200,000 of his own savings.

His aim is to re-open them all, or at least keep them in safe hands until the congregations return.

“I am intent on attracting new fellowships,” he says. “Spreading the Gospel and using these chapels not as museum pieces, but centres of worship.”

He pauses then smiles.

“What I need to express is that this project is not about me or even the chapels. This is about the Lord and this is my calling.”

It is an ambitious calling, but one which Stivey seems to have spent much of his life preparing for.

Growing up in Plymouth, he frequently attended Sunday school until his personal faith was cemented at the age of 16.

Driven by his interest in historic buildings, he began work as a chartered surveyor.

He married and became the father of five children, one of whom died and another who was involved in a traffic accident and left quadriplegic, with just the use of his right limb.

“We thought he would die,” Stivey says. “But there was a lot of praying by his bedside and he survived. Now he comes down from London in his wheelchair and helps me run the chapels.”

It was only in his 60s that Stivey began dedicating his life full-time to his faith, working as an ordained minister in the Islington area of north London.

Something else came into his life at that time - a run-down cottage in the village of Merthyr Vale, just five miles away from the former iron capital of the world, Merthyr Tydfil.

“My wife and I bought this cottage and began coming frequently,” he says. “But while I was travelling around, I noticed all these chapels shut down or up for sale. They were just being demolished, or used inappropriately.

“An idea began to germinate and I thought that someone should be doing something about that. And then I got a message, or feeling, from the Lord, that that person was me.”

In its heyday, the valleys boasted roughly 2,000 chapels, tending the souls of those who moved there to work in the coal mines.

Not only were these chapels religious hubs, they had a significant influence on cultural, educational and political life, with eloquent preachers creating theatrical atmospheres that could radicalise congregations.

Prominent nonconformists like John Hughes wrote some of Wales’ most famous hymns such as Cwm Rhondda (often known as Bread of Heaven), and chapels are credited as being incubators of Welsh culture and language, steadfast in fuelling the likes of the National Eisteddfod.

The number of chapels was so high because there were so many different non-conformist denominations. Some offered language in Welsh, others in the English language.

They often boasted charismatic preachers and offered a strong sense of community, but by the 1920s and 30s, a decline was under way.

Dr Gethin Matthews, senior history lecturer at Swansea University, says, “The last hurrah for the religion really was 1905 when a Christian revival swept Wales. After that came a general decline in organised religion.

“The valleys were hard hit. Not only was there depopulation as mines shut but many of those who came back from World War One became disillusioned with the chapel message that it was a ‘just’ war.

“Society then evolved and moved on with more modern forms of entertainment, and chapels began to be seen as dogmatic and old-fashioned.”