The Architectural Heritage Fund (AHF) is delighted to announce that it has awarded a Village Catalyst Project Viability Grant to Enterprise Causeway Ltd. to support its plans to restore and reanimate The Meeting House in Bushmills, Co. Antrim, N Ireland. This was one of 10 awards made at the AHF’s November grants meeting, where projects across the UK were awarded funding totalling £109,324.
Village Catalyst is an innovative partnership between Department for Communities (DfC), Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), the AHF and The NI Housing Executive (NIHE). The aim of the programme is to help charities and social enterprises deliver on DAERA’s Tackling Rural Poverty and Social Isolation (TRPSI) objectives by helping them test ideas and develop uses for empty historic buildings at risk in their villages, which are either listed or in a conservation area, that address core community needs.
Located within Bushmills Conservation Area, The Meeting House is one of the village’s few surviving early religious buildings. It was originally built around 1830 as a Covenanter Meeting House on land gifted by Sir Francis Workman Macnaghten, who also funded the adjacent Bushmills Courthouse (1834). Together, these buildings formed a distinctive civic and religious cluster that shaped the village’s development.
A historic image of the former Presbyterian meeting house from the west side of the River Bush.
The Meeting House served as a place of worship and community gathering for many years before closing in the 1930s. It was later used intermittently for local meetings and, from 1985 to 2023, as a small commercial garage. Today, the building is in poor condition, consisting of mainly a shell with no internal fittings.
Having recently completed the restoration of Bushmills Courthouse, Enterprise Causeway - a social enterprise and registered charity supporting economic and community regeneration across the Causeway Coast and Glens area - now hopes to bring new life to The Meeting House and restore it for use as a small-scale creative, cultural, and enterprise venue, primarily for the benefit of the local community.
Following a number of successful pilot sessions funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the group envisages using this project viability stage to further test how the small, flexible building could accommodate uses that deliver on the TRPSI Objectives.
These may also involve training in crafts, heritage skills, and creative enterprise, as well as exhibitions, storytelling, talks, and a wide range of community events, like twilight markets and performances. The animation of this informal social space will encourage intergenerational connection and creativity and support the regeneration of Main Street.
The AHF grant of £10,000 will support a comprehensive building survey and enable Enterprise Causeway to appoint a conservation-accredited professional team, including architects, surveyors, and engineers, to prepare detailed drawings and a scope of work, as well as a costed repair schedule - based on historic records of the building - to inform reinstatement of architectural details.
For more information about Village Catalyst and other programmes open in Northern Ireland, please visit the Northern Ireland Grants Page.
