Historic churches threatened by funding cuts and climate warns National Churches Trust

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Dunscore Parish Church, a Grade A listed building, received a £10,000 National Churches Trust Repair Grant to help deal with problems caused by water penetration to the walls, roof and around the windows and to restore internal plaster work.

 

Dunscore church was built in 1823 and is located in the centre of the village. It was designed by local architect James Thomson with a simple rectangular plan, a tower on the west gable behind the raised pulpit and a horseshoe-shaped gallery on columns. James Thomson (1784-1832) was a Dumfries architect and is responsible for the design of several important local public buildings and village churches. The church is in a prominent position and is an important landmark, surrounded by its churchyard. Dunscore has an ecclesiastical history dating back to the 12^th century.

 

St Peter’s church received a £20,000 National Churches Trust Community Grant to help build an extension to the church to house kitchen, toilets and new meeting spaces.

The project will add new facilities behind the existing building: accessible entry points and a toilet at church level; a fully-equipped kitchen; a hall suitable for various community uses; a second accessible WC; and a small room suitable for one-to-one meetings.

 

St Peter’s is located in the Linlithgow Palace and High Street Conservation Area, slightly west of the ruins of Linlithgow Palace. The Byzantine-style building, in the form of a Greek cross surmounted by a semi-glazed dome which illuminates the whole church, sits slightly back from the street immediately opposite Linlithgow loch. The foundation stone was laid in 1927 and the church was consecrated in May 1928. Initially called St Mildred’s in honour of Bishop Walpole’s wife, its name was changed to St Peter’s in 1979.

 

St Mary’s church, Lanark, has received a funding boost in the shape of a £40,000 National Churches Trust Repair Grant, the largest grant available, to help fund urgent roof repairs.

 

The project will tackle the urgent roof repairs needed at St Mary’s church. The main church roof and slates are in very poor condition and urgent need of repair. There are areas of loose, dislodged and missing slates, and previous repairs have been carried out with incorrect sizes. Lichen and moss are also a problem. The project will re-slate all roofs with the existing and new Westmorland green slates.

 

St Mary’s is a complex of Grade A listed building in a courtyard style, with a baptistery, sacristry, presybytery and hall. The main church was built in 1856, and rebuilt in the 1910s after a fire. It is built in the Gothic revival style, out of sandstone with ashlar dressings. The main roofs are steeply pitched and finished with Westmorland green slates; the nave and transept roofs have three bands of decorative slates.

 

Robert Monteith began the original building, inspired by his connections with the Oxford Movement of Anglo-Catholicism. Pugin and Pugin added the reredos, the Lady Chapel, and the high altar in the nineteenth century.