Charlotte Chapel, the independent Baptist church at the west end of Rose Street, is poised to buy St George’s West church in Shandwick Place for a reported non-binding bid of £1.55 million.
At present they cannot all meet together in one meeting room on a Sunday in their current building. They have reached capacity for their Sunday School and do not have space for all the church organisations who would like to be using their city centre location.
The current building needs about £500,000 to simply maintain it in the current state. An Episcopal chapel was built on the site in 1797 in the years before St John’s Church was completed in 1818 on Princes Street. This is when it became Charlotte Baptist Chapel - for ten years the congregation had been worshipping in The Pleasance district. The Chapel was rebuilt in 1911.
The Chapel’s elders recently commissioned a survey to review the options open to them as a city centre church. The only city centre option identified at this time was the former St George’s West in Shandwick Place which has become available following its merger with St Andrew’s and St George’s in George Street.
The purchase will be funded with £750,000 of the money raised from the Beulah set aside, along with the funds raised from the sale of the current church buildings (Rose Street building, the garage and the church offices) and the balance raised by the nearly 600 current members.