Our grade A listed, irregular octagon church with a faceted spire was built in 1806-8 and closed in Easter 2020. Church of Scotland who own the church and halls agreed to LCDT purchasing it we are working towards raising funds to purchase and renovate it for the benefit of the community.
LCDT are so excited to share with you that we have received an early Christmas present. Have a look at the press release and then read on.
The National Lottery approved our application for £198,250 which, added to £233,500 from the Scottish Land Fund, will enable us to proceed with the purchase of the church and bring in consultants to look in detail at what needs to be done to help us achieve the ideas that came from the community consultation we ran almost a year ago.
In addition, we may have secured a potential £1.9 million (also from the National Lottery) to cover the cost of a lot of the essential work that will be required to repair and renovate the building.
This still leaves us £1.4 million short of the amount estimated to be needed to cover the remainder of the conservation work and to refurbish the building to make it fit for our needs. We will continue to contact funding organisations to seek support but we may also look at opportunities closer to home to make a dent in the current (and hopefully reducing) shortfall.
Now that we are able to share our news, we will keep you advised of progress on a regular basis.
It has taken a long time, but now we are starting this exciting journey, and we look forward to you joining us on it.
WE are pleased to announce – the Scottish Land Fund have awarded funds to enable us to purchase the property. See announcement here.
The challenge
We will need to raise a substantial sum likely to be in excess of £3.5 million to cover:
1) Immediate and essential repairs (including work to the roof and heating system to stave off potential problems over the coming winter),
2) Immediate costs for items such as insurance, heating and lighting as we start our first phase of work – to complete the designs and documentation needed to get planning and building authorisation
3) Building work for repairing, renovating, conserving and refurbishing all parts of the church and halls.
We are waiting for answers on a number of applications that we have submitted but these can take between 3 and 6 months to be decided – fingers crossed for positive responses. If anyone has ideas on fund raising activities or has some surplus cash they would like to donate to help get things started (it always looks good in our applications if we show we are raising funds locally), please let us know through our website https://lochwinnochtrust.org.uk/contact/ or by email to lochwinnochtrust@gmail.com.
Get involved
We have a small steering group that have been working on this project for the last year but if you would like to offer your time / services in supporting us when we are ready to take the next step forward, please let us know by either of the links above.
We look forward to hearing from you.
