A SCOTTISH charity battling to document Scotland’s religious cultural heritage before it is lost has won a prestigious European award.
Recognition has been given to Scotland’s Churches Trust (SCT) for its pioneering efforts to record the country’s closing churches and their historically important contents.
Up to 400 Church of Scotland kirks are earmarked for disposal and other denominations also face having to sell off buildings as a result of declining membership.
Many have been used as places of worship continuously since before the Reformation, stretching back to the medieval era.
Now there is a race to save not only some of the buildings but also culturally significant items contained within many of them, such as lecterns, fonts and statues.
Already lost are irreplaceable items such as those contained within Lundie Kirk in Angus, which dated back to the 12th century but was ravaged by fire after being sold for £40,000.
The wood-panelled interior decorated with tributes to Admiral Adam Duncan, who led the British fleet’s defeat of the Dutch in the 1797 Battle of Camperdown, was destroyed.
SCT is now trying to record the many moveable items within each church that will inevitably be dispersed, sold or lost as kirks are closed.
To do so the charity has mobilised and supported a nationwide network of dedicated volunteers who have so far recorded almost 50 churches and their contents.
“Volunteers record everything they can, from the magnificent but fragile stained-glass windows to the tiniest graffiti occasionally scrawled on the rear pews,” said SCT director Dr DJ Johnston-Smith.
“Their inventories include impressive pipe organs that are often sold for scrap, to historic war memorials and personal dedications. No detail is overlooked, no drawer is passed by, no cupboard goes unexamined.
“The ongoing efforts of these volunteers will ensure that a permanent record is created for future researchers, documenting the thousands of unique items gifted and deposited in Scottish churches by successive generations of communities across the country.”
The initiative has now been recognised with the Religious Heritage Innovator of the Year Award, an annual accolade celebrating transformative initiatives within Europe’s religious heritage sector.
It was given to the SCT because of the Trust’s “rapid recording methodology” which “stood out among nominees for its “scalable, community-driven approach to addressing the challenges of declining church attendance and closures”.
The gong is awarded by the Future for Religious Heritage (FRH), an independent, non-faith, non-profit European network founded in 2011 and based in Brussels to promote, encourage and support the safeguarding, maintenance, conservation, restoration, accessibility and embellishment of historic places of worship.
Dr Johnston-Smith said: “Our project, and those of the other wonderful finalists from across Europe, show just how endangered the cultural, artistic, genealogical, social and historic legacy connected with churches has become.
“If anyone would like to get involved with our efforts to document this corner of Scotland’s cultural heritage before it too is lost to future generations, please get in touch.”
SCT chair Professor Adam Cumming said it was good to see the hard work and dedication of the volunteers recognised so clearly.
“We also need to thank the various congregations for their support,” he said.
“This must be an ongoing task and is a fascinating voyage of discovery, learning more about, and documenting our heritage. There is still so much to uncover.”
