Monks forced to play property market

St Mary’s Monastery, set on a prominent hill overlooking Perth, is the sole Scottish outpost of the Roman Catholic Redemptorist Order and has served as a tranquil retreat for men and women from all walks of life and all denominations for almost 50 years.

But now the owners of the decaying neo-Gothic B-listed building are fighting a battle for the monastery’s salvation. In a last-ditch bid to save their retreat, the monks are to submit a fresh planning application next month to build the houses on their land to raise £2 million. A previous application failed partly because it was made jointly with a private housing developer Cala.

But Father Ronnie McAinsh, the provincial superior of the order in Britain, said this time the monks are going it alone in the hope of securing approval for the project, which will ensure the survival of the ecumenical retreat on Kinnoull Hill.

McAinsh declared: “We are living on borrowed time at the moment. It’s a pretty desperate situation and this is really our last throw of the dice. The monastery will cease to function if we don’t get this planning permission and there is no obvious alternative home for us.”

He insisted that the application differed substantially from the previous version. “Firstly, the application is in the name of the monastery. It is not Cala’s housing development. It is our own application.

“It is an enabling application – an application to enable the monastery to carry on and every penny of the proceeds will be spent on refurbishing the monastery. That is the guarantee we give the council.”

McAinsh is one of eight monks still based at the monastery. Apart from a switch from gas to electrical lighting, the Victorian monastery is virtually unchanged since the day it was built 142 years ago.

McAinsh explained that over the past four years, with the aid of grants, the order had spent £1.2m reroofing and repointing the five-storey building to make it wind and watertight.

But he continued: “Unfortunately, inside there remains a lot of residual damp. The building needs to be completely rewiring.

“There is no central heating in the rooms which makes it very difficult, particularly for elderly people, who come here. There are communal toilets and showers with men and women mixing and so it’s not at all suitable. We would also like to provide better facilities for younger people.”

Since it was built, the monastery has served a dual purpose as a spiritual retreat and in providing help to those in greatest need. Said McAinsh: “We provide help for people with emotional problems and those in difficulties, such as divorced and separated people, alcoholics anonymous, people with addiction problems and so on. And we are also used by ecumenical groups for meetings of all kinds.”

Two years ago, in an initial attempt to save their monastery, the Order announced plans to sell surplus land for residential development to provide the funds for the extensive internal refurbishment of St Mary’s and to establish a fund for future maintenance.

But planning officials recommended refusal on the grounds that the development was against the council’s green-belt policy, in an area of great landscape value, against the Perth area local plan and development plan, and against the council’s housing in the countryside plan. Perth and Kinross Council’s development control committee split five votes to five on the issue until convener Councillor Willie Wilson used his casting vote to reject the application.

When the last application went before the council, the campaign of opposition was led by the Kinnoull Hill users group which is actively involved in the management of the popular recreational area. The monks can expect opposition again. Bill Gray, the secretary of the users group, said: “The area they intend to build on is an area of high landscape value. And under these circumstances, the local authority shouldn’t be allowing houses to be built there.”