BORN AGAIN

A WORN-OUT CHURCH HALL IN THE BORDERS HAS BEEN REIMAGINED AS A THOUGHTFUL, FULLY ACCESSIBLE HOME FIT FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

- Caroline Ednie

DETAILS

What A three-bedroom home in a converted church hall

Where Kelso

Architect Chambers McMillan

Doors Open Day offers us all the chance to peek behind the scenes at stately homes and grand public buildings. But the annual festival, held across Scotland each September, also has a multitude of smaller, quirkier, more unusual domestic properties to explore. And it was a visit to one of these, Ramp House in Edinburgh, that inspired Christine Hamilton to embark on a transformative project of her own, turning an old church hall into a dazzling new home.

Ramp House was designed by Thea and Ian McMillan, of Chambers McMillan Architects, around the needs of their daughter Greta, a wheelchair user. Hamilton was impressed by how skilfully they’d incorporated accessibility into every part of their home. It started her thinking about what she could do with the 1930s church hall in Kelso that had belonged to her family for 25 years. It had served as the premises for their children’s nursery business, but had latterly been leased out as an art gallery and framing studio. “We’d always loved the place, but I knew it was time to give it an overhaul,” she recalls. “I realised that the cost of reroofing it as commercial premises would be more than the building was worth, though, so I tried to figure out how to give it – or at least part of it – a new lease of life as a rental property.”