diff --git a/scrapy/commands/startproject.py b/scrapy/commands/startproject.py
index e702d7cdc..eccc2a3e1 100644
--- a/scrapy/commands/startproject.py
+++ b/scrapy/commands/startproject.py
@@ -20,7 +20,12 @@ TEMPLATES_TO_RENDER = (
     ('${project_name}', 'middlewares.py.tmpl'),
 )
 
-IGNORE = ignore_patterns('*.pyc', '.svn')
+IGNORE = ignore_patterns('*.pyc', '__pycache__', '.svn')
+
+
+def _make_writable(path):
+    current_permissions = os.stat(path).st_mode
+    os.chmod(path, current_permissions | OWNER_WRITE_PERMISSION)
 
 
 class Command(ScrapyCommand):
@@ -78,12 +83,10 @@ class Command(ScrapyCommand):
                 self._copytree(srcname, dstname)
             else:
                 copy2(srcname, dstname)
-                current_permissions = os.stat(dstname).st_mode
-                os.chmod(dstname, current_permissions | OWNER_WRITE_PERMISSION)
+                _make_writable(dstname)
 
         copystat(src, dst)
-        current_permissions = os.stat(dst).st_mode
-        os.chmod(dst, current_permissions | OWNER_WRITE_PERMISSION)
+        _make_writable(dst)
 
     def run(self, args, opts):
         if len(args) not in (1, 2):
diff --git a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/__init__.py b/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/__init__.py
deleted file mode 100644
index e69de29bb..000000000
diff --git a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/items.py.tmpl b/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/items.py.tmpl
deleted file mode 100644
index 88a18331c..000000000
--- a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/items.py.tmpl
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,12 +0,0 @@
-# Define here the models for your scraped items
-#
-# See documentation in:
-# https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/items.html
-
-import scrapy
-
-
-class ${ProjectName}Item(scrapy.Item):
-    # define the fields for your item here like:
-    # name = scrapy.Field()
-    pass
diff --git a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/middlewares.py.tmpl b/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/middlewares.py.tmpl
deleted file mode 100644
index bd09890fe..000000000
--- a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/middlewares.py.tmpl
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,103 +0,0 @@
-# Define here the models for your spider middleware
-#
-# See documentation in:
-# https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/spider-middleware.html
-
-from scrapy import signals
-
-# useful for handling different item types with a single interface
-from itemadapter import is_item, ItemAdapter
-
-
-class ${ProjectName}SpiderMiddleware:
-    # Not all methods need to be defined. If a method is not defined,
-    # scrapy acts as if the spider middleware does not modify the
-    # passed objects.
-
-    @classmethod
-    def from_crawler(cls, crawler):
-        # This method is used by Scrapy to create your spiders.
-        s = cls()
-        crawler.signals.connect(s.spider_opened, signal=signals.spider_opened)
-        return s
-
-    def process_spider_input(self, response, spider):
-        # Called for each response that goes through the spider
-        # middleware and into the spider.
-
-        # Should return None or raise an exception.
-        return None
-
-    def process_spider_output(self, response, result, spider):
-        # Called with the results returned from the Spider, after
-        # it has processed the response.
-
-        # Must return an iterable of Request, or item objects.
-        for i in result:
-            yield i
-
-    def process_spider_exception(self, response, exception, spider):
-        # Called when a spider or process_spider_input() method
-        # (from other spider middleware) raises an exception.
-
-        # Should return either None or an iterable of Request or item objects.
-        pass
-
-    def process_start_requests(self, start_requests, spider):
-        # Called with the start requests of the spider, and works
-        # similarly to the process_spider_output() method, except
-        # that it doesn’t have a response associated.
-
-        # Must return only requests (not items).
-        for r in start_requests:
-            yield r
-
-    def spider_opened(self, spider):
-        spider.logger.info('Spider opened: %s' % spider.name)
-
-
-class ${ProjectName}DownloaderMiddleware:
-    # Not all methods need to be defined. If a method is not defined,
-    # scrapy acts as if the downloader middleware does not modify the
-    # passed objects.
-
-    @classmethod
-    def from_crawler(cls, crawler):
-        # This method is used by Scrapy to create your spiders.
-        s = cls()
-        crawler.signals.connect(s.spider_opened, signal=signals.spider_opened)
-        return s
-
-    def process_request(self, request, spider):
-        # Called for each request that goes through the downloader
-        # middleware.
-
-        # Must either:
-        # - return None: continue processing this request
-        # - or return a Response object
-        # - or return a Request object
-        # - or raise IgnoreRequest: process_exception() methods of
-        #   installed downloader middleware will be called
-        return None
-
-    def process_response(self, request, response, spider):
-        # Called with the response returned from the downloader.
-
-        # Must either;
-        # - return a Response object
-        # - return a Request object
-        # - or raise IgnoreRequest
-        return response
-
-    def process_exception(self, request, exception, spider):
-        # Called when a download handler or a process_request()
-        # (from other downloader middleware) raises an exception.
-
-        # Must either:
-        # - return None: continue processing this exception
-        # - return a Response object: stops process_exception() chain
-        # - return a Request object: stops process_exception() chain
-        pass
-
-    def spider_opened(self, spider):
-        spider.logger.info('Spider opened: %s' % spider.name)
diff --git a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/pipelines.py.tmpl b/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/pipelines.py.tmpl
deleted file mode 100644
index e845f43e9..000000000
--- a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/pipelines.py.tmpl
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
-# Define your item pipelines here
-#
-# Don't forget to add your pipeline to the ITEM_PIPELINES setting
-# See: https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/item-pipeline.html
-
-
-# useful for handling different item types with a single interface
-from itemadapter import ItemAdapter
-
-
-class ${ProjectName}Pipeline:
-    def process_item(self, item, spider):
-        return item
diff --git a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/settings.py.tmpl b/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/settings.py.tmpl
deleted file mode 100644
index a414b5fde..000000000
--- a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/settings.py.tmpl
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,88 +0,0 @@
-# Scrapy settings for $project_name project
-#
-# For simplicity, this file contains only settings considered important or
-# commonly used. You can find more settings consulting the documentation:
-#
-#     https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/settings.html
-#     https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/downloader-middleware.html
-#     https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/spider-middleware.html
-
-BOT_NAME = '$project_name'
-
-SPIDER_MODULES = ['$project_name.spiders']
-NEWSPIDER_MODULE = '$project_name.spiders'
-
-
-# Crawl responsibly by identifying yourself (and your website) on the user-agent
-#USER_AGENT = '$project_name (+http://www.yourdomain.com)'
-
-# Obey robots.txt rules
-ROBOTSTXT_OBEY = True
-
-# Configure maximum concurrent requests performed by Scrapy (default: 16)
-#CONCURRENT_REQUESTS = 32
-
-# Configure a delay for requests for the same website (default: 0)
-# See https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/settings.html#download-delay
-# See also autothrottle settings and docs
-#DOWNLOAD_DELAY = 3
-# The download delay setting will honor only one of:
-#CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_DOMAIN = 16
-#CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_IP = 16
-
-# Disable cookies (enabled by default)
-#COOKIES_ENABLED = False
-
-# Disable Telnet Console (enabled by default)
-#TELNETCONSOLE_ENABLED = False
-
-# Override the default request headers:
-#DEFAULT_REQUEST_HEADERS = {
-#   'Accept': 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8',
-#   'Accept-Language': 'en',
-#}
-
-# Enable or disable spider middlewares
-# See https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/spider-middleware.html
-#SPIDER_MIDDLEWARES = {
-#    '$project_name.middlewares.${ProjectName}SpiderMiddleware': 543,
-#}
-
-# Enable or disable downloader middlewares
-# See https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/downloader-middleware.html
-#DOWNLOADER_MIDDLEWARES = {
-#    '$project_name.middlewares.${ProjectName}DownloaderMiddleware': 543,
-#}
-
-# Enable or disable extensions
-# See https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/extensions.html
-#EXTENSIONS = {
-#    'scrapy.extensions.telnet.TelnetConsole': None,
-#}
-
-# Configure item pipelines
-# See https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/item-pipeline.html
-#ITEM_PIPELINES = {
-#    '$project_name.pipelines.${ProjectName}Pipeline': 300,
-#}
-
-# Enable and configure the AutoThrottle extension (disabled by default)
-# See https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/autothrottle.html
-#AUTOTHROTTLE_ENABLED = True
-# The initial download delay
-#AUTOTHROTTLE_START_DELAY = 5
-# The maximum download delay to be set in case of high latencies
-#AUTOTHROTTLE_MAX_DELAY = 60
-# The average number of requests Scrapy should be sending in parallel to
-# each remote server
-#AUTOTHROTTLE_TARGET_CONCURRENCY = 1.0
-# Enable showing throttling stats for every response received:
-#AUTOTHROTTLE_DEBUG = False
-
-# Enable and configure HTTP caching (disabled by default)
-# See https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/downloader-middleware.html#httpcache-middleware-settings
-#HTTPCACHE_ENABLED = True
-#HTTPCACHE_EXPIRATION_SECS = 0
-#HTTPCACHE_DIR = 'httpcache'
-#HTTPCACHE_IGNORE_HTTP_CODES = []
-#HTTPCACHE_STORAGE = 'scrapy.extensions.httpcache.FilesystemCacheStorage'
diff --git a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/spiders/__init__.py b/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/spiders/__init__.py
deleted file mode 100644
index ebd689ac5..000000000
--- a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/module/spiders/__init__.py
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,4 +0,0 @@
-# This package will contain the spiders of your Scrapy project
-#
-# Please refer to the documentation for information on how to create and manage
-# your spiders.
diff --git a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/scrapy.cfg b/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/scrapy.cfg
deleted file mode 100644
index 1daeaa541..000000000
--- a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/project/scrapy.cfg
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,11 +0,0 @@
-# Automatically created by: scrapy startproject
-#
-# For more information about the [deploy] section see:
-# https://scrapyd.readthedocs.io/en/latest/deploy.html
-
-[settings]
-default = ${project_name}.settings
-
-[deploy]
-#url = http://localhost:6800/
-project = ${project_name}
diff --git a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/spiders/basic.tmpl b/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/spiders/basic.tmpl
deleted file mode 100644
index e9112bc95..000000000
--- a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/spiders/basic.tmpl
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,10 +0,0 @@
-import scrapy
-
-
-class $classname(scrapy.Spider):
-    name = '$name'
-    allowed_domains = ['$domain']
-    start_urls = ['http://$domain/']
-
-    def parse(self, response):
-        pass
diff --git a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/spiders/crawl.tmpl b/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/spiders/crawl.tmpl
deleted file mode 100644
index 356496487..000000000
--- a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/spiders/crawl.tmpl
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,20 +0,0 @@
-import scrapy
-from scrapy.linkextractors import LinkExtractor
-from scrapy.spiders import CrawlSpider, Rule
-
-
-class $classname(CrawlSpider):
-    name = '$name'
-    allowed_domains = ['$domain']
-    start_urls = ['http://$domain/']
-
-    rules = (
-        Rule(LinkExtractor(allow=r'Items/'), callback='parse_item', follow=True),
-    )
-
-    def parse_item(self, response):
-        item = {}
-        #item['domain_id'] = response.xpath('//input[@id="sid"]/@value').get()
-        #item['name'] = response.xpath('//div[@id="name"]').get()
-        #item['description'] = response.xpath('//div[@id="description"]').get()
-        return item
diff --git a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/spiders/csvfeed.tmpl b/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/spiders/csvfeed.tmpl
deleted file mode 100644
index cbcbe9e2c..000000000
--- a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/spiders/csvfeed.tmpl
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,20 +0,0 @@
-from scrapy.spiders import CSVFeedSpider
-
-
-class $classname(CSVFeedSpider):
-    name = '$name'
-    allowed_domains = ['$domain']
-    start_urls = ['http://$domain/feed.csv']
-    # headers = ['id', 'name', 'description', 'image_link']
-    # delimiter = '\t'
-
-    # Do any adaptations you need here
-    #def adapt_response(self, response):
-    #    return response
-
-    def parse_row(self, response, row):
-        i = {}
-        #i['url'] = row['url']
-        #i['name'] = row['name']
-        #i['description'] = row['description']
-        return i
diff --git a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/spiders/xmlfeed.tmpl b/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/spiders/xmlfeed.tmpl
deleted file mode 100644
index 5aa2aa8b0..000000000
--- a/tests/sample_data/read_only_templates/spiders/xmlfeed.tmpl
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,16 +0,0 @@
-from scrapy.spiders import XMLFeedSpider
-
-
-class $classname(XMLFeedSpider):
-    name = '$name'
-    allowed_domains = ['$domain']
-    start_urls = ['http://$domain/feed.xml']
-    iterator = 'iternodes' # you can change this; see the docs
-    itertag = 'item' # change it accordingly
-
-    def parse_node(self, response, selector):
-        item = {}
-        #item['url'] = selector.select('url').get()
-        #item['name'] = selector.select('name').get()
-        #item['description'] = selector.select('description').get()
-        return item
diff --git a/tests/test_commands.py b/tests/test_commands.py
index c25495d16..f3fe45139 100644
--- a/tests/test_commands.py
+++ b/tests/test_commands.py
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ import inspect
 import json
 import optparse
 import os
+from stat import S_IWRITE as ANYONE_WRITE_PERMISSION
 import subprocess
 import sys
 import tempfile
@@ -17,7 +18,7 @@ from twisted.trial import unittest
 
 import scrapy
 from scrapy.commands import ScrapyCommand
-from scrapy.commands.startproject import IGNORE
+from scrapy.commands.startproject import IGNORE, _make_writable
 from scrapy.settings import Settings
 from scrapy.utils.python import to_unicode
 from scrapy.utils.test import get_testenv
@@ -170,14 +171,14 @@ class StartprojectTemplatesTest(ProjectTest):
         template folder has the same permissions as in the project, i.e.
         everything is writable."""
         scrapy_path = scrapy.__path__[0]
-        templates_dir = os.path.join(scrapy_path, 'templates', 'project')
+        project_template = os.path.join(scrapy_path, 'templates', 'project')
         project_name = 'startproject1'
         renamings = (
             ('module', project_name),
             ('.tmpl', ''),
         )
         expected_permissions = get_permissions_dict(
-            templates_dir,
+            project_template,
             renamings,
             IGNORE,
         )
@@ -209,22 +210,30 @@ class StartprojectTemplatesTest(ProjectTest):
         See https://github.com/scrapy/scrapy/pull/4604
         """
         scrapy_path = scrapy.__path__[0]
-        templates_dir = os.path.join(scrapy_path, 'templates', 'project')
+        templates_dir = os.path.join(scrapy_path, 'templates')
+        project_template = os.path.join(templates_dir, 'project')
         project_name = 'startproject2'
         renamings = (
             ('module', project_name),
             ('.tmpl', ''),
         )
         expected_permissions = get_permissions_dict(
-            templates_dir,
+            project_template,
             renamings,
             IGNORE,
         )
 
-        tests_path = os.path.dirname(__file__)
-        read_only_templates_dir = os.path.join(
-            tests_path, 'sample_data', 'read_only_templates'
-        )
+        def _make_read_only(path):
+            current_permissions = os.stat(path).st_mode
+            os.chmod(path, current_permissions & ~ANYONE_WRITE_PERMISSION)
+
+        read_only_templates_dir = str(Path(mkdtemp()) / 'templates')
+        copytree(templates_dir, read_only_templates_dir)
+
+        for root, dirs, files in os.walk(read_only_templates_dir):
+            for node in chain(dirs, files):
+                _make_read_only(os.path.join(root, node))
+
         destination = mkdtemp()
         process = subprocess.Popen(
             (
@@ -250,14 +259,14 @@ class StartprojectTemplatesTest(ProjectTest):
         """Check that pre-existing folders and files in the destination folder
         do not see their permissions modified."""
         scrapy_path = scrapy.__path__[0]
-        templates_dir = os.path.join(scrapy_path, 'templates', 'project')
+        project_template = os.path.join(scrapy_path, 'templates', 'project')
         project_name = 'startproject3'
         renamings = (
             ('module', project_name),
             ('.tmpl', ''),
         )
         expected_permissions = get_permissions_dict(
-            templates_dir,
+            project_template,
             renamings,
             IGNORE,
         )