‘Buy a pane’ scheme proving popular as part of Berriedale church window restoration

Work is continuing on a project to restore the windows in Berriedale’s historic church – a painstaking process involving 1722 individual pieces of glass.

Caithness-based glass artist Michael Bullen is carrying out the task for Berriedale Church and Cemetery Association, which is responsible for looking after the 198-year-old building.

The church has six main windows and, to help fund the work, one of these will be a “community window”. Individuals and local businesses are invited to “buy” a pane for £35 and each donation will be acknowledged in a list of benefactors.

A new roof was completed in January 2023 and Mr Bullen, of Rookery Glass, made a start on restoring the windows later in the year – one pane of glass at a time.

“One window has already been removed, restored and refitted back into the church,” Mr Bullen explained. “There are no donation glass panels in this window, as we are going to fit them all into the next window to be restored.

“This second window has now been removed from the church and the window opening temporarily boarded up.

“The window is currently in the Mission Hall at Latheronwheel – the hall is slowly being converted into a studio and this project is the first to be carried out there.

“The first job is the removal of all the glass. That is now under way and will take about one more month.

“The metalwork will then have all the paint stripped off and any corrosion removed back to bare metal. Then repairs to the metal are undertaken – this will take about two months.

“Unfortunately the condition of this window is much worse than the first window restored.

“Due to corrosion, much of the structural strength of the metalwork is compromised and the window cannot be replaced back into the building as a self-supporting structure.

“An additional stainless steel subframe will be used, and this will support the original framework. The intention is to keep as much of the original window as possible without compromising the strength, stability and weather-tightness of the window.

“The original intention was to weld any new sections onto the existing frame. However, the cast iron is variable in quality and does not weld well.

“Welding is also a very invasive technique and would irreversibly alter the original structure. It was decided to use various modern adhesive and mechanical fixings as a more sensitive approach.

“The window should be ready to be refitted into the church by early summer 2025. During the summer of 2025 the donor panels will be made, and it is hoped – funding allowing – to also run a children's community programme to make extra glass panes to be included into the window.

“The donor panels will be a mixture of painted, stained and enamelled glass, fused glass and etched glass.

“Over the next few months I will be making up test panels to show how the various decorative processes work.”

Mr Bullen explained that there are 287 pieces of glass per window, a mix of full diamond shapes, half-diamonds, quarter-diamonds and partial diamonds – adding up to 1722 for the whole church, excluding the glazing in the porch.

Mr Bullen moved to Caithness in 2006 and was technical manager at North Lands Creative Glass until June 2021. Before that, he was employed as a stained-glass restoration/conservator at Lincoln Cathedral.

Sheila Rapson, chairperson of Berriedale Church and Cemetery Association, praised the “brilliant” work being done by Mr Bullen and reported a good response to the community window scheme.

“A lot of people have got in touch with us wanting to buy a pane and we have sold a good amount,” she said. “It’s £35 to buy a pane and there has been a lot of interest in it.

“There are a lot of connections to Berriedale, people that moved away. In years to come, people will look at it and think they bought a pane.”

Anyone wishing to find out more about the scheme can get in touch through Berriedale Church and Cemetery Association’s Facebook page or by contacting any committee member.

Mrs Rapson explained that the church is used for funerals and weddings as well as some services, while the association also holds afternoon teas.

“We have our spring service and we have our Christmas carol service,” she said. “We get the bairns from the primary school in Dunbeath to come and it’s lovely.

“Heather Stewart always does our services for us and she is really good.”

Harling was carried out at the same time as the roof repairs.

“We’re going to get new heaters put in as well,” Mrs Rapson said. “That’ll make a difference.

“We did a lot of work in the old graveyard at Covid time. We uncovered a lot of the graves because the grass had grown over. We got a lot of the grass and the moss off the old gravestones and it was lovely to see the writing.

“There’s a lot of people, even abroad, getting in touch asking about graves in the old graveyard.”

Mrs Rapson added: “We’re a small committee and we just try our hardest.

“We try to keep on top of things and try to keep it as good as we can. It’s lovely there and it’s so peaceful, even though it’s so close to the road.

Berriedale parliamentary church, built in 1826, one of 31 in the Highlands designed by Thomas Telford.

It and the adjacent cemetery were put up for sale in 2007 by the Church of Scotland. In response, a meeting was held and was attended by the congregation and wider community.

Welbeck Estates purchased the church and cemetery on the basis that a committee would take on the running and maintenance of the building and fundraising for it. A small group of individuals took on this role, working together to maintain and refurbish the building.

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