Historic Fife church unveils plans for extension

Leslie Baptist Church has submitted a planning application to Fife Council for permission to further extend the historic building.

The box church was designed by John Lister, brother of the the first minister, The Rev Thomas Lister, and opened in 1886.

The Lister Memorial Hall was added in 1954 and the church was designated as a ‘B’ Grade listed building by Historic Scotland in 1994.

Now the church wishes to continue to improve its facilities for the use of the local community.

A report prepared by Fouin+Bell Architects Ltd explained the problem the church faced with trying to realise this ambition.

It said: “Early dialogue with the Church Building group identified that the church is seeking, to improve and enhance its community facing facilities, to more fully integrate with the community on its doorstep and to better meet known needs in terms of childcare, youthwork and the provision of community based facilities.

“The issue facing the church, however, was one of the lack of space, both within its site and within its building.

“A review of its current space use resulted in a phased plan to re-arrange its current internal plan spaces to allow more flexible use of existing spaces along with enhanced kitchen and toilet facilities.

“To maintain existing facilities and minimise disruption of existing services, it was quickly realised that the existing office and meeting room use would need to be relocated to allow future phased work to relocate and enhance centralised kitchen facilities and enlarged toilet facilities to better provide community based programmes.”

Given the site and space constraints facing the church it wants listed building consent for a first floor extension at the rear.

This will be on top of the existing extension which houses the current kitchen and toilet block and will accommodate the church office, meeting room and internal stairs.

The architects said: “The proposal seeks to “ tidy up” the side access to the church and provide a more attractive disabled compliant access to the rear hall, kitchens, and toilets of the church.

“As the existing church is a Grade B listed building, it was deemed essential that the proposal retains the existing building fabric as much as possible and seeks to provide the facilities in as non-intrusive a way as possible.

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“A new scraped render external finish over both the existing rear building and the new first floor proposal will enhance the buildings weather protection and present a more contemporary coherent elevation which contrast with the historic fabric of both the Lister Memorial Hall and the main sanctuary of the existing church building.”

The church has received several major financial contributions towards the project.

These include: £7000 from the Hugh Fraser Foundation, £10,000 from both the Garfield Weston Foundation and The Robertson Scholarship Trust, and £50,000 from the Fife Environment Trust.

A decision on the application will be delegated to council officers, and comments will be welcomed until September 18.

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