Former church building to be restored with £9,000 aid

A Perthshire landmark has been awarded a substantial windfall for much needed repairs.

The Locus Centre in Aberfeldy, which has served as a community centre for nearly 30 years, has been awarded a £9,000 grant from Historic Environment Scotland to help pay for essential restoration work.

The C-listed building was designed as a congregational church in 1877 and was transformed into a community hub with multi-purpose meeting rooms and exhibition space in 1989.

The funding will be used to fix internal and external damage caused to the building’s stone steeple, by repointing the ashlar stonework using lime mortar. Other projects to benefit from the scheme include one to convert the former Greenview School in Parkhouse, North Glasgow, into affordable housing.

Castle Leod, Strathpeffer, widely thought to be the inspiration for the fictional Castle Leoch in the successful Outlander novels, was also awarded funding to carry out repairs and make the building more accessible to the public.

The seven projects share a total of £576,460 through Historic Environment Scotland’s (HES) Building Repair Grant Scheme, with priority being given to those applicants who demonstrated that investment in their projects would result in community benefit.

Martin Fairley, head of grants at HES, said: “The purpose of Building Repair Grants is primarily to assist with the repair and reuse of important historic buildings and sites, but also to ensure the end use is something the wider community benefits from.”