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The church tower is the oldest part of the church and dates from the original church built by John Davidson in 1596.
I don’t know if this is a horror story but it has certainly seemed that over the past year.
Having been informed following a five yearly survey by Church of Scotland appointed surveyors and engineers that we needed to address the condition of the church tower, in particular the lintol failures around the clock faces, the board started the task of the repair.
Alastair Cunningham, a consultant in construction and heritage was contacted by the fabric convenor and he agreed to assess the problem. This involved detailed inspection and consultation with Historic Scotland as well as specialist stone repairers. Following this it was determined that there were no stone lintols above the clock and that the treatment from the early 1970’s which used synthetic paint and cementitious materials was preventing the stone from “breathing” and allowing continued deterioration which was unseen.
As the Church is a Category A Listed building, great care and to be taken in techniques and materials used in any repair.
The initial inspection at the base of the tower indicated that some stone may need to be replaced but that in general removing the coating and re-pointing the stone, using appropriate lime based mortars, would give a repair that would last many years.
The estimated cost was of the repair was in the order of £24,000 with the amalgamation of little funds held in various accounts and the donations from the congregation (£10,000) it was calculated that we could manage to undertake the project. At this point Peter MacKenzie managed to secure funding from East Lothian Council under the local Civic Pride Fund Scheme to the sum of £5000 this made the prospect of completion a lot more secure and after an initial wobble the board agreed to go for it.
The stonemason (HISTORIC MASONRY FORMAL CONTRACTS (SCOTLAND)) was appointed and Alastair Cunningham continued his services as project manager. The scaffolding went up and work at the lower level went well, then it all started to go pear shaped...as the stonemason removed the coating at higher levels he discovered that the damage was much worse than had been initially thought, the stone work had effectively dissolved in the trapped rainwater and large voids appeared which required more and more work. You can realise that the treasurer had not budgeted for this work (although she had put a contingency fund of £2000 away to cover unexpected costs) and it just kept getting worse. We were now in a position that work required to be done that was in excess of the budget and it was either patch and shut down or find the extra money and fix the problems as they appeared.
Session and board decided that as the major expense to that point had been the scaffolding it would be prudent to complete the work whilst the scaffolding was available. (To return at a later date would have meant incurring further scaffolding costs to reach the areas needing repair.) Luckily we had some funds held in a bond by the trustees at 121 (Church of Scotland) left over from the sale of glebes and buildings owned by both Grange and Preston churches at the time of union. This bond had generated over several years interest which was available as fabric funds for use in the up keep of all our church buildings but would need to be used to complete the extra work repairing the tower. It went against the careful management of the funds that the treasurer had been undertaking but it was decided to use in a limited fashion what was required to achieve completion. (the limited fashion soon became a flood)
The stonemason did his job and noted following the high winds at the end of the year, that areas of the west wall had even become unattached to the rest of the building, In addition to this the low overnight temperatures meant that lime pointing was delayed as anything under 5 degrees centigrade prevents curing. Alastair Cunningham gave constant reports and advise as to the extent of the required repairs and eventually we turned the corner. Well I say turned the corner the next big shock was the state of the roof. Whilst the slates were in good order it was reported that the nails holding the slates had all but disintegrated and that a major job was required to bring the roof back to a good condition. Prestongrange Roofing Company undertook this task (they do most of the roofing work for the church) and managed to complete the task keeping costs as low as they could. They thought the weather cock could do with a paint and took it down however Bill Baillie noticed it was made of copper and that painting it would not be a good idea. They did however have to change the finial (the lead cap at the point of the tower roof) which had become paper thin over the years due to the excess of our Scottish weather.
So where are we.... the final cost of the tower will be in the region of £40,000 with hopefully some claw back of some of the VAT through a charity set up specifically to cover work on church buildings. There has been lots of pain but the final result has been stunning and should last for many years before any more work will be needed. We have to thank the Stonemasons the roofers, the painters and the architects for giving us such a beautiful tower. They worked hard through all weathers but what we have is a monument to their hard work.
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