Attendance must be about 20 people a week - max. The chance of growth is about zero, unless a family moves in, and I'm not sure why a family would move to Stornoway. Unless the family like lots of space, and they don't like people, then the Isle of Lewis is a great place to move to.
Hardly worth building a church, and I believe it is actually a building the church built, not one they bought and converted. I suspect they had to follow very strict rules to get planning permission, to maintain the ambiance of the area. These islanders are a very protective group of people, they want to maintain their heritage and culture.
So the church had to look like the buildings around it. Which is why it is not the cookie-cutter style.
Scotslander, I have friends in Edinburgh ward. It seems odd that for such a large city there is only one ward. How many active members in Edinburgh would you say there are? Jehovahs witnesses say they have eight congregations in the city!
Sorry. I haven't been to a church in Edinburgh for 18 years. So my Intel is a little dated.
Was about 140-160 attending back in the day. The Edinburgh building is a stake center, with the mission home right next door. So that gave a boost to numbers too.
When I took a quick tour of the Conference Center in Salt Lake City, the guide explained that the original plans for the building showed no steeple. Hinckley insisted that the building had to have a steeple. The architect was stumped, because the structure of the building would not support a steeple. While he was trying to figure out how to put a steeple on the building, by making a styrofoam model with a steeple, it occurred to him that he could make the steeple out of light-weight styrofoam.
So the LDS Conference Center has a styrofoam steeple.
I worked downtown during the construction of the Conference Center and what Richard is reporting is true - at least the part about the steeple being an add on. I am not sure about the styrofoam although I am sure they had to make it light. I seem to recall a steel subframe.
But when you think about it - the Hinkster's steeple ruins the building!!
You would think that after all the architecture reviews that were done that ole' Gordo would have been happy - but towards the very end of construction he got an itch for a steeple and it's true - the architects didn't know what to think or do. There were several proposals including a huge, detached free standing steeple on the south west corner of the building. I am sure the architects didn't think too fondly of Gordo's steeple - but helk - he was signing the checks so they had to obey.
At the time, I lunched quite regularly @ the COB cafeteria down in the basement. Quite nice really and the prices were reasonable. And for those of you that wonder if the GA's pay for their meals - yes they do. I saw several fork over the cash to the cashiers. That aside - I had an interesting conversation with a few church employees who said the original cost estimates for the Conference Center (which by the way was originally proposed to be named after the Hinckster) came in at around $300 million. They spilled the beans and said cost overruns were horrendous and that it came it at around - get this - $750 million - nearly three quarters of a billion dollars.
Also, there was a unique vision for the building - it was to be a 'cultural center' for the city. But it never panned out that way. Only ChurchCo sponsored or affiliated events are allowed - so much for being inclusive of the community. In some ways it's as non-inclusive as the temple next door.
When I was a kid in Pottstown, PA, the local Mormons rented a squalid little building in a park for meetings. No air conditioning. The congregation was sweating bullets all summer. Fat ladies in flowery dresses waved the sacrament programs at their faces like fans. Chubby priesthood men with armpit stains on their cheap suits scowled, and children wriggled impatiently in their metal folding chairs.
I was gratified to see that Christian Science wasn't even listed in the Wiki article. Scientology also, for that matter.
The image of Eilley Bowers, among other famous Scottish Mormons, caught my eye, and I clicked on the link. Very interesting. Among other sections on this interesting woman, there is this:
"Seeress of Washoe
Bankrupt and with no remaining family in the United States, Bowers set herself up as a fortune-teller using her peep stone, billing herself as "Mrs L. S. Bowers, The Famous Washoe Seeress". She enjoyed some success with her predictions, successfully predicting, among other things, the fire which destroyed much of Virginia City in 1875. Due to the continued economic decline in northern Nevada following the collapse of the mining industry, in the 1880s she moved to San Francisco, where she continued to practice as a scryer."
She lived in Nauvoo for a while. It seems she learned from the best1