I live in an old Scottish Kirk. We came here in 2018. When we got the place it had been badly neglected for years by the previous owner, when he got it the building had been deconsecrated. Before that it was looked after by the parish council, there has been little investment in it. They did install a electricity supply cable but it was never connected. The building had nothing modern, no electric, no water, no insulation. The previous owner had fairly gutted it, he’d removed all the pews and torn out most of the lath and plaster. He’d burnt it all (and the organ) on the golf course. The neighbour in the old manse thought the fire would set fire to their house as it was so big. For all his work (destruction), he did not try to repair the roof. When we arrived it was leaking badly in many places. One corner was so bad that we had to get a professional roofer in as a great hole had opened up. He said the whole section was “mush”. That we paid for with our wedding gift money. We realised that the roof needed to be done before anything but, the church is in an active graveyard, so a caravan was out of the question, therefore we camped in the building during renovation.
The key to everything was a cherry picker. When lockdown came we couldn’t get any tradesmen to help. Luckily, when we moved in, a local electrician connected up the mains wire. After that, another did put in the start of a supply, sockets, lights and storage heaters. We added to that. Justin had electrician experience and did the rest. Scottish water refused to connect the water, so we made a rainwater harvesting system, which works just fine. The loo was a composting system. During lockdown we ran down to England and collected a cherry picker that we’d purchased on ebay. We still have it and it is in permanent use here. That cherry picker was key to the renovation. We sourced more slate on Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree. Pretty soon the roof no longer leaked. Gradually the camping in our church became living in our church. It is out opinion that we just caught this building form becoming an unviable ruin, if the roof had collapsed in that corner, the job would have become a huge one. The building had been on the market for a number of years, so not many could see its potential and if the roof had collapsed it would have been an even greater risk.
We also completed planning permission, building standards and listed building consent. All above board! The fact that we did all the work ourselves made it possible. We also were determined to use traditional methods and not modern shortcuts. The lath was replaced like for like and lime plastered. Though it was a big job to put back the lath and plaster, we also were able to put in breathable insulation behind it.
This had been almost a full time job and there is a long way to go yet, but it is worth it! You don’t really “own” a building like this, but just become another cog in its survival, a caretaker.
Sept ’26 – Mr Gloss Paint had been at work again. The chap who slapped modern gloss paint on everything here also put squirty foam in any cavity he could find and some sort of rubber sealant in gaps everywhere. Just been getting the rotten wood out of the porch, he’d slapped so much sealant and squirty foam on everything, each time I dig down into the rot I find modern materials under it or over it. Funny how the bare wood on the porch with no paint over it is just fine. Modern materials, designed to keep the wet locked in, rather than out. Thank goodness he never slapped his gloss paint on the big windows. No idea who Mr Gloss Paint was but I often wonder if he is residing in the graveyard here.
I made this Wikipedia page about the church: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochcarron_Old_Parish_Church