From kirk to knitwear as new future beckons for Fair Isle church
A FAIR Isle church which has been closed since 2019 is set to enjoy a new lease of life as a knitwear hub.
Designer Marie Bruhat is now the owner of the island’s former Church of Scotland kirk, with plans to renovate it as a business premises – covering workshops, production and retail.
Her company Fair Isle Knitting Holidays bought the category C-listed building, which dates back to 1892, after it was made available by the Church of Scotland.
Services have been held at the island’s Methodist chapel since the Church of Scotland building closed in 2019, and prior to that they alternated between the two.
The renovated kirk would be open to visitors and islanders on a regular basis, with hopes that it could launch next year.
One key aspect of the project is to celebrate Fair Isle knitting and its story, Bruhat said.
Originally from France, she moved to the island permanently in 2017 after undertaking an internship with fellow knitwear designer Mati Ventrillon in Fair Isle.
These days she runs a business which involves not only selling knitwear but offering holidays that give people the chance to immerse themselves in Fair Isle knitting on the island, which is located between the Shetland mainland and Orkney.
Her holidays, which are booked up for the rest of the year, now use the Fair Isle Bird Observatory for accommodation after it re-opened in 2025.
“But I’m struggling with space for workshops,” she explained when speaking to Shetland News as she returned home from working on her croft.
“Usually I was doing the knitting holidays for two knitters, because that’s the space I had in my home to accommodate them, but now that they’re based at the bird observatory I can take more knitters if I wanted to.
“Getting the space where I can have 10 knitters knitting comfortably together, that will be really nice.”
Having everything in one place will make her knitwear sales more efficient, with less risk of missing out on custom if she is busy.
The kirk idea came up after the Fair Isle Development Company ultimately backed out of offering a proposal for repurposing the building for community use.
The group tried to identify possible uses that offered something not present on the island already; one of the more eye-catching ideas floated was some sort of swimming facility as part of a leisure orientated set-up.
But it was conceded there would not have been the income to sustain such a facility.
“One thing the community was worried about was for someone to buy it privately and transform it into a home, and then we would lose access to it,” Bruhat added.
But in her new knitwear project “people will still be able to come, even just to admire the beautiful stained glass window and be able to have a look at the building”.
She said there is also a hope that people on the island can make use of the building if they did not want to knit at home.
Having bought the building in July, Bruhat is eyeing up renovations in two phases – the first is focused on getting the building back into use, with the second potentially including new windows, masonry work and even the creation of a mezzanine.
Pews will be taken out, but will be offered to locals – and ones leftover or kept back will be repurposed. “Nothing is going to be wasted,” said Bruhat, who is also a retained firefighter in Fair Isle.
One key aim of the project is to celebrate Fair Isle knitting and its roots.
She feels as time has gone on some people have forgotten that the popular type of knitwear originated from the island.
While acknowledging the items in the Fair Isle museum, Bruhat said “it feels like it really deserves a space where the light will be shined on it and the story will be told”.
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