00:00So, one of the really exciting things that we've got happening this season on Ireland
00:09is that we're finally in a position where we can undertake some very much needed repair
00:13work to the kirk. It's suffered quite a lot with wind and weather damage, the usual attrition
00:20of age on a building, so what we're planning to do this summer is we're going to fully
00:24strip and re-slate the roof and do a lot of the external repair work to make the building
00:28wind and water tight again. The roof was actually last done quite recently in the 1970s
00:35by the Ministry of Defence, but it was previously repaired in the late 50s when the Trust acquired
00:43St Kilda. Every element that makes up the landscape of St Kilda contributes to the legibility
00:49of the story of people's life on the island. What survives that we manage, a large quantity
00:55of it is ruinous. We have some structures that have been roofed or that are in use but
01:00very few of them retain still a lot of the character that the St Kilda community would
01:06have known. The church and schoolroom are quite exceptional in that because those interiors
01:11have never been modernised or altered by very small touches, so when you go into the church
01:18you get the sense of the building as they would have experienced it and I think that's
01:22very powerful for the visitors. In terms of the island itself, any account you read
01:27will talk about the importance of faith to the St Kilda community and so I think making
01:32sure you're appropriately caring for and preserving their kirk is a very big part of our responsibility
01:39on the island. When you deal with a historic building and an old structure, the way that
01:49it was constructed originally and the tools that were used and the materials all contribute
01:54to the way that the building appears and the way that it ages and times move on and materials
02:00change but when you're then repairing a building like that it's very important that you try
02:05as far as possible to work with the same materials and therefore the same skills and having the
02:11craftspeople who are able to come out and work with that type of building is exceedingly
02:16important and the fewer of these buildings that survive the harder it then becomes to
02:21sustain and support that craft. So with a building like the church and a lot of the
02:25work we do on St Kilda, details down to the exact type of sand and lime mix that you use,
02:30the colour of the slates, the way that they're nailed, every last little detail is as far
02:36as we can, the way that it would have been done originally and that is the best and most
02:40appropriate way to maintain those buildings. I think the reason it's so important to use
02:48traditional methods on a building like this when it's a scheduled monument is just out of
02:56sympathy to the building, it needs to remain traditional throughout and not have any modern
03:05interferences so that the archaeology is correct going forward and you're still looking at
03:11the same building. We use more or less the same tools as they would have used when the
03:19various crafts were first done but just modern adaptations of these tools. The company I
03:26work for is great because you would expect these traditional crafts to be done by dusty
03:33old men in boiler suits but we've got a lot of youngsters that work for us, I'm actually
03:38one of the older ones now. I've worked for LTM for 11 years and I'm one of the old heads
03:45now but it wouldn't be the same in a lot of other traditional conservation companies,
03:52stonemasonry companies around Scotland. The craft is really dying out but we have a young
03:59squad so we've got a lot of hope for the future of traditional skills.
04:06St Kilda is a special place and I didn't really realise, I've worked on many islands with the company,
04:13I didn't realise how in touch with the culture of the people who used to live there you feel
04:23when you're here, you really feel like you're walking on top of their footsteps more so
04:28than other places I've been. It's a special place.
04:33Everything that you do at St Kilda requires a much longer lead in time and a lot more
04:38thought in terms of the logistics of getting the personnel and the materials on site because
04:44especially for a project of this magnitude where you're talking full height scaffolding
04:49and large quantities of heavy materials like slates, so we basically started at least 12
04:55months ago to plan the dates that we could get those deliveries out here on the landing
05:01craft runs and then to get the people on site and then it's just you're in the hands of
05:06fate with the weather beyond that.
05:09This is a really important project for us and it wouldn't be possible for us to do the
05:14repair work to our kirk without the help of the following funders.
05:17Thank you so much for your help. We hope to have our church back to its former glory very soon. Thank you.
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