Storm Ciara 2020

As the owner of the former Barony St John church and hall buildings on Ardrossan’s shorefront, winter is usually a fairly depressing time of the year for me.

Cold, wet weather and storms galore play havoc with public transport, making it difficult for the service users of our charity (The Scottish Centre for Personal Safety) to get to and from our Barony St John Centre, despite it being so close to bus and railway links.

Having the former Barony St John hall building can be a problem – we need to make sure it’s wind and watertight, which isn’t always easy in a 131-year-old building – but having the former church building to look after too, always proves to be a challenge.

The church building is 156-years-old and has been derelict, as far as I know, since 2010.

A couple of months ago during Storm Brendan, several parts of our buildings roof were damaged including the overhang roof from the hall building to the church building blew down and needed work on it to repair the damage. Luckily, we had sealed the doors to the church and hall back in November 2019, effectively separating both buildings, so the internal damage was minimal. But last week the Ardrossan coastline was once again battered – this time by Storm Ciara.

Storm Ciara proved to be much stronger than Storm Brendan and although no roofing was blown off our buildings this time, we did get quite severe water ingress into the church building.

Missing roof tiles meant roof leaks above the shore facing windows of the church and these have brought ceiling plasterwork down and sent water falling onto the upper gallery floor….which in turn, has seeped downwards, bringing down more ground floor ceiling plasterwork and creating a huge internal puddle at the main entrance of the church.

 

It doesn’t look good but at least the main structure of the building is still sound.

When my charity first came to Ardrossan back in 2015, I said I would give ourselves three years to renovate and equip the Barony St John Centre and open up to the public. This was achieved by 2016 and a Feasibility Study recommended that we try to convert the church building into an Events Centre as a secondary source of income for us.

I pledged to try to achieve this by 2020 but, reluctantly, I now have to admit defeat.

For many, this will be sad news but some of you reading this will be smiling now because some of you actively stood in our way, preventing us from developing the church building. But who loses out on this? Is it me? My charity? Or the people of Ardrossan who have lost a fantastic opportunity to increase jobs in the town, increase visitor spend in the town and also lost the chance of a great local venue for live bands, plays and exhibitions right on their doorstep?

Either way, without backing from the Council and the “movers and shakers” of Ardrossan, this dream cannot be turned into a reality – at least not on my watch.

It’s therefore time to face the reality; we will continue to own and improve the Barony St John hall building (our Centre), but it looks like, regrettably, we will have to put the former Barony St. John’s Church building up for sale later this year. Maybe someone else can develop the church into an Events Centre or flats or a dream home on the seafront?

We will however, continue to look into how the hall building can be developed and I will keep you posted of this progress, as well as the final destination of the church building as the year goes on.

 

 

The Death of the Barony?

As many of you know, I bought the Barony St John church and hall buildings back in December 2014 – almost five years ago now. Since then, I have strived to renovate the hall building as a base for my charity, The Scottish Centre for Personal Safety, and looked at how the church building could be saved.

The church building closed around 2010 and with the heating switched off, the radiators burst after the first hard frost which brought down parts of the ceiling below the upper gallery.

Additional roof leaks have seen other parts of the plasterwork collapse but I was sure, that with support from North Ayrshire Council, we could get funding to repair and renovate this iconic building and perhaps even bring some jobs  to Ardrossan.

My plans have been published many times over the years – turn the church into an Events Centre which could be a venue for live bands, plays, pantomimes, wedding fayres, art exhibitions, sporting events, etc. and this would, in turn, generate jobs and signpost people to come to Ardrossan from all over Ayrshire and beyond.

The outside gravel areas of the church buildings could also be enclosed in glass and become a William Wallace Visitors Centre with a fantastic view of the seafront.

We have been provisionally donated the Wallace “Braveheart” statue which used to reside at the foot of the Wallace Monument plus a replica of his sword and other historical memorabilia to highlight Wallace’s routing of the English garrison at Ardrossan Castle in 1296.

We all know how American and other tourists love Scottish history and if only one percent of the one million tourists who head across to Arran on the Ardrossan ferry each year visited this Centre, it would equate to 10,000 visitors staying in Ardrossan instead of driving through our town.

Throughout 2017, we showed our plans to the local community including Open Days in the Barony St John hall building. Over 450 local residents took part in our surveys and in 2018 we published a Feasibility Study showing that the local community, through various public events, unanimously agreed that the buildings should be turned into an Events and Visitor Centre.

But unbeknownst to me, there would be three elements which would stand in our way – Greed, Bigotry and Corruption.

You see, instead of seeing the many benefits an Events and Visitor Centre would bring to Ardrossan (the saving of an iconic building which features on almost every photo of Ardrossan’s seafront; an influx of tourists and visitors resulting in increased spending in local shops; the creation of more local jobs; the development of the seafront; etc.), many “movers and shakers” came up with excuses of why not to support the project.

Everything from a rivalry between Ardrossan and other towns – “Why can’t we build an Events Centre in Saltcoats instead of Ardrossan?” and “Why should Ardrossan get all the tourists?” to people wanting their share of what they saw as a potentially lucrative pie –  “Why should your charity get all the profits from an Events Centre, we want our own Events Centre for our club / society / group?” and incredibly “We don’t want anything to do with William Wallace because he represents SNP and Independence”.

It seems that despite the local community wanting to save the Barony St John buildings and turn them into an Events and Visitor Centre, the “movers and shakers” can influence North Ayrshire Council, and without their backing (not necessarily financial) this project will not be funded by the likes of the Big Lottery.

So as the church building continues to decline and the likelihood that it will be put up for sale again looms, I have one question for the “movers and shakers” – if the Barony St John will not be used as an Events and Visitor Centre, what will it be used for? Or will this iconic building soon be no more?

Take a look at the photo of our coastline with and without the Barony and tell me what you think – or better still, tell North Ayrshire Council.

Window pains

Back in April 2017, I published a post titled Pane-less which told you all about my endeavours to replace the windows in the Training Room section of the Barony St John hall building.

Two years on, and I trying to do the same with the rest of the hall building – but it’s proving to be a bit of a nightmare.

The windows in the main hall are very large. Ten of them are arched..

And one is a very large circular window with the Star of David in it mentioned in a previous post…

ALL of them are needing repaired with rotten frames, cracked glass and in some cases letting in water.

It would cost a small fortune to replace them but to help reduce our heating bills, I have an idea;

We could replace the five external facing windows, repair the others and put in a suspended ceiling to reduce the space we need to heat.

You can see the transformation that took place in 2017 when we replaced the windows in the Training Room area – the left window is the old one with the right window a new replica.

They look fantastic.

Fingers crossed the hall windows will look just as good.

The Cupboard under the Stairs

Last time, I told you about the Easter Egg Hunt I organised for my kids (Easter Egg Hunt 2019), well it got really interesting for me when I was photographing my daughter finding her egg in the cupboard under the main staircase leading up to the church gallery.

I noticed some names written on the back of the cupboard door. Some appeared fairly new and were written by a black marker pen.;

“John S. Hughes, J.W.G. Neil, Allana MacDougall and Joyce C. Inglis” with “Alec Bingham” printed in pencil below this and “H. McLean” printed to the left of it.

Does anyone know these people? I would love to find out when this was written (no charges of vandalism will be sought LOL).

But my attention was drawn to an inscription to the left of this list of names. It was in pencil but the handwriting is in beautiful scroll;

“David & Shona, Saltcoats, 1873”

It’s a long shot, but if anyone has any idea who David and Shona is, I would really appreciate hearing about it.

In the meantime, if you want to know more about my efforts to save the Barony St John buildings, check out our Facebook page The Barony St John Regeneration Project or contact my charity, The Scottish Centre for Personal Safety via http://www.ScotCPS.org.uk or look us up (ScotCPS) on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

Goodbye for now.

Easter Egg Hunt 2019

Every year since taking over the Barony St John in Ardrossan, I have held an Easter Egg Hunt for my children.

In the first couple of years I just planted Easter eggs around the church, split the church in half and sent my son searching to the left and my daughter off to the right. It worked well but last year I wanted to mix it up a bit so I introduced clues to a bigger egg.

So how good are you at riddle solving?

Last year’s clues to where the eggs were hidden were “Heart, lungs, liver, kidneys” and “Arial Calibri, Times New Roman, WingDings”.

The answer to my daughter’s riddle was Organ (as everything in her clue are organs in the body) and she found her Easter egg hidden behind the church organ.

My son’s riddle answer was Font as his clue was a list of fonts or text styles used in computer writing. His egg was hidden under the lid of the church baptismal font.

So, the challenge was on to come up with new clues for this year.

My daughter loves Harry Potter so her clue was “Like Harry Potter before he left for Hogwarts, your egg can be found sleeping here”.

And for all you Potter fans, you’ve probably guessed that it is the cupboard under the stairs.

 

 

 

 

 

My son is older and needs a slightly tougher clue so his was “Another word for urine and the first part of A.D. as in 2019AD. This one should tickle your ivories”.

And hopefully you’ve guessed that this is “pee” and “Anno” (as in Anno Domini), so his egg was inside the church piano.

 

 

Happy Easter folks 🙂

Winter is coming…

As the temperature changes, the plaster in the church becomes colder and colder. It shrinks and occasionally falls off.

This time, a large amount of plaster has fallen from the ceiling around the lower level.

And it has brought down a light fitting too.

This is always a heartbreaking sight for me – although the Design Team tell me its cosmetic as all the plaster will have to be taken off and renewed as part of the building redevelopment – but it is still a terrible time for me.

To be honest, I’m not sue how much more the church building can withstand.

My fingers are crossed that we get a funder or sponsor to come onboard with this project sooner rather than later.

Watch this space.

Good books

I previously mentioned how myself, Emma Paterson and her daughter Ami had been scouring the debris of the Barony St John church and found some old pamphlets in the rafters. Well, we also found a bible.

Now this bible was lying open and obviously had been lying up there for years. What we cannot understand is how it got there. It is too big to fallen down the gap between floorboards so we can only assume that at some point, the floor in the upper gallery was exposed and a bible has fallen down.

The page that it was open at was in the Book of Psalms and the line that caught my eye was “Thou puttest away all the wicked of the earth like dross”. Very apt for the work my charity does. 🙂

And we found another book on the same day behind the church organ.

  

Despite it’s age and the discoloured, dusty cover, the inside pages were immaculate.

The book was titled “Lindsay’s Letters on the Holy Land” and is the Third Edition dating from 1839.

A quick internet search revealed that Lord Alexander Lindsay was the 25th Earl of Crawford and 8th Earl of Balcarres. He was born on the 16th October 1812 at Muncaster Castle in Cumbria. He went to Eton and Trinity College before travelling around the world collecting art (how typical of a Victorian member of the aristocracy LOL).

He spent 1837/38 journeying across the Middle East and writing his “Letters on the Holy Land” which seems to have been a huge hit as it was republished at least three times.

He also published “Progression by Antagonism” in 1846 and “Sketches of the History of Christian Art” in 1847. His art collections are still on display in many galleries around the world.

Lord Alexander Lindsay died on the 13th December 1880 aged 68 in Florence, Italy. He was brought home for burial in the family crypt at Dunecht House near Aberdeen but soon after his burial, his grave was robbed by a local poacher. His body was eventually recovered from a shallow grave fourteen months later. A monument marks the shallow grave where his body was found at Dunecht but his remains were reburied in the family vault in Wigan.

Why Wigan? Well, Alexander’s father, James Lindsay, was the Tory MP for Wigan from 1820 to 1825 before becoming the Baron of Wigan in 1826. After his death on 23rd December 1869, he was buried in the family vault at All Saints’ Church in Wigan – where his son would join him 11 years later.

Remembrance Sunday 2018

Every year since 2015, I have put a poppy on the Remembrance plaque of the parishioners of the Barony who fell in the Great War.

This year I put a soldier silhouette as well to mark the 100th anniversary of the War – and someone came in with some knitted poppies for the plaque too.

Lest we forget.

Spiritual movements?

Some weird goings on have been happening in the Barony St John recently. We have had CCTV installed and the monitor shows some strange orbs flying around the hall.

The video is better viewed on our Facebook page – Barony St John Regeneration Project – but here are a couple of photographs which hopefully you can make out the orbs and the trails they leave across the floor.

Very weird.

And the video has sparked interest from a Paranormal Investigation Team who want to conduct some experiments in our hall.

What do you make of it?