Projects

Anstruther Wester Town Hall, Hew Scott Hall and St Nicholas Tower project

The Anstruther Wester Town Hall, the Hew Scott Hall and the St Nicholas Tower together form a listed building complex which is currently owned by Fife Council through the Common Good Fund and the Church of Scotland. They are operated in two separate parts by the local church and the Anstruther Improvements Association.

Townscape Heritage Initiative

The building complex has formed part of a bid for grant funding to the Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI), funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and designed to help communities regenerate Conservation Areas. In April 2010 £915,000 was awarded to Anstruther with a large chunk for the purpose of conserving and restoring important local historic buildings to bring them back into productive use. The Hew Scott Hall and Wester Anstruther Town Hall, together with the Murray Library, are the two main priority projects within the Initiative and this opportunity has prompted the building’s owners (Fife Council and the Church of Scotland) to consider how best to secure its future as a central part of the Anstruther Wester community.

The Anstruther Improvements Association’s role

After much exploration and consultation, the Church of Scotland and Fife Council have endorsed an in-principle decision for the building to be sold to the AIA, given its status as a community-led charitable organisation. The AIA Committee is currently doing everything necessary to ensure that we are an organisation that has the capacity to rehabilitate the building and manage it over the long-term. This includes revising our constitution, adding to the Committee, establishing a project sub-committee, identifying all funding opportunities, appointing an external consultant (Sandra Macrae, funded by the THI and Fife Council) and working closely with Fife Council and the Church of Scotland. The focus at the moment is on developing a business plan and architectural drawings with the advice and assistance of Sandra Macrae, Fife Historic Buildings Trust and architects ARC.

The project

Our initial, short-term objective is to restore the building to a state which will enable existing users to resume their activities and to halt the steady decline of its physical fabric. We are also working on a longer-term, more ambitious plan that will upgrade facilities in both halls for performing arts events and community activities and will provide a community cafe. The plans will also provide full disabled access.

The current situation

The second and final round application to the Heritage Lottery Fund is to be submitted by the end of April, with a decision expected in September 2011. This application outlines in greater detail our proposal for the Halls and what funding is needed. Our current priority is to bring the Hew Scott Hall back into use as soon as possible. Historic Scotland has also recently confirmed a grant of £500,000 to match the THI award, and we hope that some of this money will be allocated to the project.

Early in 2011 we submitted an initial bid to the Big Lottery for funding for the long-term project. However, it became apparent in discussions with the Big Lottery that they will not consider funding the project until we can provide better evidence of the Anstruther community’s commitment to and engagement with the project.

What you can do

Our most pressing objective at the moment is to demonstrate the community’s support for developing the building into a community-owned resource with a clean bill of health and a sustainable future. We have set up an online petition and would be grateful if you would sign up to it.

Would you like to help? Please sign the online petition

Please ask all your friends and family within and outwith Anstruther to sign up too. Over the next few months we intend to hold a number of consultative events – we urge you please to come along, find out more about the plans and make your opinion known. Finally, we would welcome any letters or emails of support for the project, as they will help to demonstrate the strength of our community’s engagement. We will not be able to achieve our plans without your support!

If you have any questions about this project, please do not hesitate to contact AIA President, Christine Keay, by telephone (01333 310579) or letter (Forthbank House, 31 High Street West, Anstruther, KY10 3DJ). You can also contact us through our website. Letters or emails of support for the project, which would be gratefully received, can also be sent to these addresses.