In June 2012 we received an email from Randy Sewell, an artist working in stained glass, who had been commissioned to create a window for St Margaret’s Church in the diocese of Atlanta, Georgia.   He found our website via Google search, and asked if we could send him photographs of the statue of St Margaret above the porch on our church, from which he could gain inspiration.

It took a bit of time to get photographs of the right resolution for his needs, but we got there in the end.   He even spotted a small bird’s nest perched on the foot of St Margaret!   In March this year, we noticed a very generous contribution from Randy to our restoration appeal, to thank us for helping with his project, and he has kindly sent this delightful photograph of the window.   This makes a wonderful connection with another parish of St Margaret, thanks to the powers of the internet!

After consultation with Scottish Natural Heritage, we have applied for a Bat Exclusion Licence.   In 2008, efforts were made to encourage our population of pipistrelle bats to move out of the church and into various bat boxes which have been put up on trees round the church, and one  heated box attached to the building.   These have not yet tempted the bats to move!  There has been correspondence in various newspapers about bats, churches, and people.   If those reluctant to disturb the bats (ours are the most common of the species) were on the cleaning roster for their church, or even attended services, concerts etc in a building inhabited by bats flying about above their heads, they might feel less well disposed towards the colonies in their church.  We realise it may take some time to exclude the complete colony, but we are hopeful of eventual success.

It is very good to think that we have at last started with our efforts to keep St Margaret’s Church in good repair and ready for whatever the 21st century may bring.   We would not have arrived at this moment without financial support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Historic Scotland, and all our generous donors.   A great deal of hard work is on going, and we are most grateful to all who have so kindly supported us.

Despite numbers being fewer than usual, we raised the impressive sum of £960.40.   We are most grateful to everyone who helped, especially Nancy on the cake stall who brought jars of her own marmalade and slices of clootie dumpling, a welcome seasonal offering.   Jimmy Geddes sold an impressive number of raffle tickets.  Once again we would like to thank all who so generously donated raffle prizes, especially Mr & Mrs Lawrence Banks, the Speyside Dental Practice and Gerald at the Dell Shooting School, Glenlivet.

The event was masterminded by Kath Davies and Lynette Findlay:  every year Kath says ‘never again’ and every year she summons up the energy to organise the event once more.   We look forward to another successful Soup and Sweet next year!

The funding table is made up of £66,429 from Historic Scotland, £65,900 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, £23,746 in VAT repayment and £21,589 from St Margarets.

We have now had HLF’s Permission to Start on the delivery phase and our contractors, McKerron & Milne from Rothes, will move in with cherry pickers at the beginning of November.   They will remove guttering and downpipes, replacing them with temporary PVC ones to see us through the winter while the originals are repaired, cleaned and repainted ready for reinstallation when the scaffolding goes up in March.   Work will then start on the joiner work, slating, repointing with lime mortar, and replacing the gutters.   The hope is that the weather will allow completion by the end of May 2013 at the latest.

The project will be overseen by Ian Fraser from LDN Architects in Forres.

A great project, and we are most grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic Scotland for making it possible.   This wonderful building will soon be restored and ready to survive into the 21st century and beyond.

Aberlour’s Bicentenary celebrations took place from the 13th to the 16th September. St Margaret’s played a big part, as many old boys and old girls from Aberlour Orphanage returned. The Church was open on the 15th and 16th (Saturday and Sunday) and it was the end point of the David Anderson’s historic walk round Aberlour. About sixty people visited the Church, many of them former orphanage residents, who had been to several services every Sunday while they were at the Orphanage. They all had sentimental and often happy memories of St Margaret’s.

We prepared a booklet of our magazine articles, “Remembering Aberlour Orphanage”, which proved popular.

The final event of the Bicentenary celebrations was an ecumenical Songs of Praise, organised by Reverend Shuna Dicks, the minister at the Kirk. St Margarets played a part and Very Reverend Dean Cliff Piper represented us.

An article in the Press & Journal Friday 10th August 2012 about our fundraising campaign.

An evening of great fun and musicianship was on offer, and was well supported by the Aberlour community.   We are most grateful to all the performers and estimate that over £1,000 was raised for each charity.

Thanks, however, to energetic fundraising efforts and generous donations, we are able to meet these commitments, and look forward to hearing from the HLF and our architects that permission to start on the repairs has been granted.

His talk was entitled ‘The Commonwealth War Graves Commission – A Continuing Story’, and described the work of the Commission from its inception in 1917 to the present day.   Sir Alistair had gathered information about local war graves as well as those abroad, and his audience found the talk absorbing and his photographs fascinating.  We are most grateful to him for preparing such an interesting talk and to all those who loyally came out on a beautiful evening to support our cause.