Iona Abbey needs funding to pay for maintenance

Gerard Sweeney (The Oban Times, letters, August 16) ‘feels ashamed to be taxed to visit and pray at the birthplace of Scottish Christianity’. The Iona Community holds services in the abbey church at 9am and 9pm daily (10.30am on Sundays) and there is no charge to attend these services. Historic Environment Scotland deliberately does not staff the entrance gate until after the services have finished.

The site was owned by the Iona Cathedral Trustees until 2000 when HES (then HS) took over, simply because the trustees could no longer afford to maintain the site. Their tenant, the Iona Community, could not afford to buy or maintain the site either, so we were actually rescued by HES, and continue to offer hospitality to this day only because it took over.

No Christian site in this country can afford to operate without funds to pay the council tax, electricity, phone/broadband, sewage, maintenance and staffing costs, to name but a few. The Iona Community spends thousands of pounds on toilet rolls, and makes no charge for the use of the toilets, the cleaning, the constant repairs to the toilet locks and the toilets themselves. The abbey scaffolding is a permanent, if mobile, presence simply because if it was not maintained, chunks of granite would fall upon the heads of Christians (and non-Christians) who come to pray.

The Iona Community guest programme is suspended because of major renovation work on the accommodation. To try to continue, in the monastic tradition, to offer hospitality, we have opened our refectory to welcome visitors for simple lunches, tea and coffee, in return for donations. This gives visitors the chance to see inside the abbey accommodation and to shelter from the rain.

The HES shop in the cloisters helps HES to raise enough money to keep the site open, pay staff (who all live on Mull or Iona), and fund the ongoing masonry repairs, grass-cutting and other maintenance.

Our services in the abbey are ecumenical, and our shop across the road from the site sells theological books, Fairtrade gifts and chocolate, sacramentals and jewellery, much of which is made locally. Without these commercial opportunities, many people living on Iona would be unable to boost their livings (nearly everyone has to have more than one job to survive here), and visitors would have nowhere to get a coffee, let alone lunch or an overnight stay. Who does he thinks provides these services?

I have lived here nearly 30 years, 21 of them working for the community, the last 19 alongside the staff of Historic Environment Scotland, and I am outraged that Mr Sweeney has managed to avoid paying on his frequent visits, given that the community itself charged a ‘suggested donation’ of £1 back in 1988. St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh charges admission, as does York Minster, Lincoln Cathedral and most places that are subject to the normal costs of living.

One of the songs regularly sung in the abbey church is All are Welcome, and we are proud to be able to continue to do this, thanks to the intervention of HES, the support of island residents, the Iona Community and the majority of people who visit Iona and return over and over again.

Carol Dougall, Iona.