Doors Open Days is Scotland’s largest free festival that celebrates heritage and the built environment, new and old. Every September, you can explore hundreds of fascinating buildings across Scotland for free. Some open up once a year, some just once in a lifetime.
Doors Open Days is a national event run by the Scottish Civic Trust. Information about the national programme, including event listings, can be found at www.doorsopendays.org.uk. Doors Open Days, along with Scottish Archaeology Month take place throughout Scotland and are part of European Heritage Days – an initiative which promotes a sense of community and a “common heritage” throughout the continent.
Programme Highlights:
Auld Kirk Museum
The Auld Kirk Museum is delighted to be hosting the 50th Anniversary Annual Art Exhibition, three years on, after multiple pandemic-related delays. Dick Stevenson, one of the original founders of Annual Art will once again be exhibiting. This exhibition gives visitors the opportunity to purchase local art. In 2019 artist, Michael Gahagan won Best Watercolour for his painting, ‘Street Life, The Rogano ’
Bishopbriggs Library
Bishopbriggs Library is a former Victorian school building situated in the centre of Bishopbriggs. The library has an excellent Thomas Muir exhibition and local history section. Jimmy Watson from the Friends of Thomas Muir and Bishopbriggs Community Council will be available to answer questions on the exhibition, the artwork of Thomas Muir and the books available both on Thomas Muir and Bishopbriggs local history.
Cadder Parish Church
For over 900 years there has been a church on this site. The present mid-19th century building contains wonderful stained glass by Alf Webster, Sadie McLellan and others. The graveyard includes a mort safe and watch- hut to discourage grave robbers!
Clober Farm
Clober Farm is a fully accessible vacation accommodation with accessible garden, patio area and raised beds, designed with the wheelchair user in mind. Close to Loch Lomond and the Trossachs. Open all year. Clober Farm apartment and grounds was bequeathed to Spinal Injuries Scotland in 2007 and, following the extensive renovations, was offcially opened by our Honorary President HRH Princess Royal in 2012. It is a self-catering apartment that can sleep up to six people, in three bedrooms. There is level access throughout and a combined kitchen/ living area with patio doors leading onto the garden.
Fort Theatre
The Fort Theatre (so called as it follows the Antonine Wall) is now home to amateur dramatics group and charity, The Antonine Theatre Group. The building was erected as a granary approximately in 1793 when Bishopbriggs became centre of the agricultural boom. The Antonine Theatre Group founder Jimmy Bissell adopted the building as our home in 1960. Since then, we have organised hundreds of performances, community events, and private functions and hosted a variety of visiting groups across Scotland. The Fort Theatre is where actor Peter Capaldi (Dr Who) started his acting career and also founded the Dr Who fan club long before taking on this role himself.
Gavin's Mill
Gavin’s Mill is an ancient Corn Mill on the banks of the Allander Water in Milngavie. It has a date stone, inset near the lower doors, saying 1664. The Mill was powered by an overshot water wheel which still turns today.
Lillie Art Gallery
Rachel Mimiec’s exhibition of new work has been formed from refections upon artefacts within the cultural landscape and remnants of a previous explorative public art installation within East Dunbartonshire. Many will recognise the artist’s Scholar’s Rocks embedded within the local landscape and set upon wooden plinths, throughout Milngavie, Torrance and Baldernock.
New Kilpatrick Parish Church
The New Kilpatrick church was built in 1808 on the site of an earlier church of 1649. The original larger parish dates from the 13th century. The church has a very fne collection of stained-glass windows, including windows by Stephen Adams, Alfred and Gordon Webster, Norman M Macdougall, CE Stewart, James Ballantine, Eilidh Keith and Susan Bradbury.
St Mary's Parish Church
St Mary’s Parish Church, which stands at the centre of Kirkintilloch, has a beauty and grandeur that speaks of its intended role as a ‘temple’ and ‘cathedral’. It was designed to be unashamedly majestic. Its architects were not parochial in searching for the desired effect and borrowed from pre-Reformation and English church design traditions. St Mary’s is a Church of Scotland church, but it is much more than that architecturally.
Where possible we will update our listings to notify of cancelled, postponed and rescheduled events, however we STRONGLY ADVISE that you check with the venue/organiser in the first instance for updates.
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