Around 300 people attended last night’s meeting to discuss a community bid for St Stephen’s Church.
In a show of hands, the group overwhelmingly endorsed the St Stephen’s Playfair Trust’s (SSPT) aspirations to acquire the property, restore it, and retain it on a sustainable basis for commercial, cultural and community uses. There was one abstention.
Huge challenges and equally heartening pledges of support emerged during the meeting.
What follows is a thumbnail sketch.
- SSPT has until just 20 February to make an offer to the General Trustees of the Church of Scotland.
- SSPT hopes £500,000 will be enough so long as its community and cultural credentials outweigh a potentially greater sum of glittering pounds, shillings and pence on offer from at least two other ‘credible bidders’.
- If its offer is accepted, SSPT plans to lease the building for a year while it raises funds.
- During that year, SSPT means to return the property to its former community uses rather than let it remain vacant and vulnerable.
- To cover total costs, SSPT will need over £6m from: the community; Heritage Lottery Fund; Big Lottery Fund; Historic Scotland; and as yet unidentified generous benefactors.
- The building’s condition is not too bad – its high-quality Craigleith stonework remains sound, and its roof was overhauled in 1985.
- Inverleith’s Councillor Lesley Hinds said councillors look favourably on a community bid, and will – if possible, given the time constraint – seek ways to use the Council’s right of pre-emption to secure SSPT as a preferred bidder (see Breaking news, 3.6.13).
- ‘All well-disposed parties’ will push the General Trustees to extend the first deadline for bids. [For email and postal addresses, see Breaking news (10.2.14).]
- Marco Biagi MSP offered PR support via a Members Debate in Holyrood, and hoped that the forthcoming Community Empowerment Bill would be enacted in time to help.
- Promises of support were received from the Stockbridge & Inverleith and New Town & Broughton Community Councils, the Central Edinburgh New Town Association, and the Stockbridge Primary School Parent-Teachers Association.
- The Trust meets again this morning (Friday) to assess the meeting, coordinate arrangements with the Council, and to begin setting up banking arrangements for the receipt of donations.
SSPT Chairman James Simpson began by describing the Trust, established about 3 years ago as an unincorporated association. It will become a charity and incorporated company, limited by guarantee, if and when its bid is accepted.
Simpson paraphrased Professor David Walker’s architectural assessment and description of the building which concluded by saying it ‘should not be exposed to unsuitable uses’.
Simpson says the SSPT plans to:
- Retain the great octagonal room as a performance space – 'potentially one of Britain’s great music rooms';
- Convert the middle floor below – ‘marvellously useful but architecturally beastly’ – for (rentable) commercial purposes;
- Upgrade the spacious basement vaults for renewed community uses;
- The general activities pencilled in for each lower-level floor are potentially interchangeable.
Stewart Brown, conservation architect and former colleague of James Simpson, outlined his involvement in the broadly similar saving and redevelopment (1998–2003) of the Catholic Apostolic/Bellevue Baptist Church/Edinburgh Brick Company which is now the Mansfield-Traquair Centre. The trust which so successfully achieved this did so by finding office uses for two floors below ground level, and these provide regular income to supplement lets for concerts, weddings, galleries etc. in the building’s nave.
Tannis Dodd of the Stockbridge & Inverleith Community Council offered the group’s support.
The meeting advanced to questions, clarifications, observations, and the first public pledge of £1,000 from a local resident.
A show of hands overwhelmingly carried the Trust’s resolution (see above), and light refreshments followed.
A force to be reckoned with ...
The New Town united and in high dudgeon is certainly a sight to behold. Roused, it is variously intellectual and menacing, principled and pragmatic, sentimental, ruthless, embracing, multi-tentacled, deeply resourceful, selfish, high-minded and occasionally stark-staring bonkers. On this occasion, it has a worthy cause and support from sources well beyond its own natural constituency. God help anyone who stands in its way.
More to follow. Watch this space.
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