An historic Highland church has won a £6,500 grant to help restore its building and grounds.
St Ninian’s Episcopal Church (Anglican), near Drumnadrochit, aims to improve the building and its grounds in order to create a better place for worship.
Urgent remedial works are required to the 1853 C-listed building, which lies six miles west of Drumnadrochit on the shores of Loch Meikle.
They include damp prevention measures, renewing parts of the roof and cleaning and protecting stained glass windows. A new disabled toilet facility will also be added.
A range of activities have been identified to encourage younger members of the community, and to make it a suitable venue for meetings, concerts and weddings. These activities will be published on the church website.
Interpretation boards will be erected in the grounds and in the building highlighting key features of the church and its history as one of the few Anglican churches in the Highlands.
Using the funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), the Vestry of St Ninian’s will draw up firm proposals before applying for a larger grant in the future.
George Stone, the secretary to the Vestry, said: “Here at St Ninian’s we are all excited at the prospect of upgrading the church building. A cure for the problem of dampness will be a great benefit, and the provision of a new toilet will give modern facilities for all those who use our church. We can now look to the future with confidence.”
St Ninian’s role in the community is linked to the Episcopal Church maintaining a long and largely unbroken history in parts of the Scottish Highlands.
The church’s adherence to the Stuart family was ‘the steel that put the backbone into the Jacobite cause’. After the Battle of Culloden, the Urquhart people suffered severely, and in the early 19C there were attempts to supply regular Episcopalian services in the parish and eventually a Mr Cameron donated land for a church dedicated to St Ninian.