Wedding bells set to ring in Highland chapel for first time in 128 years

WHEN Annabel Lewis walks down the aisle later this month she will be taking a path last trod 128 years ago.

She and husband-to-be Huw Thomas are to be the first couple married in a historic Highland chapel since 1882.

She is the daughter of Derek Lewis, former director general of HM Prison Service in England and Wales and Home Office adviser, who owns the 5,000-acre Drimnin Estate in the Morvern peninsula with his wife, Louise.

Since taking over in 2002 the couple have helped restore the chapel, built in 1838, Drimnin House (built 1852) and other buildings on the estate.

Yesterday, scaffolding was coming down on the building as finishing touches were being applied ahead of the 12 September wedding.

Annabel, 27, a management consultant, and Huw, 28, a solicitor, said they were both thrilled that the chapel will be suffciently complete for them to be married there as Drimnin is a place they both love and is where Huw proposed.

St Columba's was one of the first Roman Catholic churches to be built in Argyll and was the forerunner of the RC Cathedral in Oban.

The men who built it included Alexander MacKillop, the father of Blessed Mary MacKillop who will be made Australia's first saint by the Pope in a ceremony in Rome later in the year.

The B-listed landmark overlooking the Sound of Mull later fell into disuse and recently was a ruin without a roof.

The Lewis family launched the St Columba's Drimnin Trust five years ago to restore it as a place for non-denominational Christian worship.

Mr Lewis said: "This is the culmination of five years' work on the chapel and to bring it back into use not only for religious services but also as a centre for music and the arts.

"It's wonderful that its first use will be for the wedding." He said in future it is hoped to get young ensembles from music colleges to set up residences at the chapel to have a place to rehearse but also give performances in the building and elsewhere in the area.

The chapel was built on the site of the ancient Drimnin Castle, on a rocky knoll on lands that were once those of the Macleans of Drimnin.Allan Maclean of Drimnin, who is buried on the estate, lost control of Drimnin after supporting the Jacobite uprising and it passed through several other owners before being bought in 1835 by a wealthy Edinburgh lawyer, Sir Charles Gordon.

The Gordons were Catholics in an almost exclusively Protestant area and the locals disapproved when Sir Charles demolished the castle ruins and replaced them with a chapel, which was opened in 1838.

Local feelings were exacerbated by the introduction of a full-time priest, who lived in the newly constructed Hermitage close to the chapel, and by making the chapel the centre of worship for Catholics from Mull and Ardnamurchan, who came by boat to the nearby jetty.

After the Gordon family sold the estate in 1943, the chapel ceased to be used.

The building later fell into disrepair despite attempts by the Highland Council to help a rescue plan.