St Anne's Roman Catholic Church, Sweyn Road, Thurso. View from west

Description St Anne's Roman Catholic Church, Sweyn Road, Thurso. View from west

Date 29/3/2017

Collection Historic Environment Scotland

Catalogue Number DP 258496

Category On-line Digital Images

Scope and Content The population upsurge caused by the government’s decision to situate its fast breeder reactor at Dounreay led to a temporary increase in church membership in Thurso’s existing churches. At this time, rural depopulation was negatively affecting congregations elsewhere. More significantly, the population increase led directly to the construction of Thurso’s first Catholic Church on the atomic estate at Pennyland in 1960. Pre-Dounreay, the Catholic population in the Thurso area numbered under fifty, who attended mass in Wick; by 1963 this had risen to 350, a fact which necessitated the construction of St Anne’s, financed largely by congregational fundraising and designed by local architect Sinclair Macdonald & Son. This adheres to the mid-twentieth-century growth of the Catholic Church in Scotland as being characterised by the erection of modern churches in new towns and housing estates as a result of population shift. Likewise, it reflects the growth of the Church in areas outwith the central belt during the mid- to late-twentieth century, all largely a consequence of industrial or technological development. As an aside to nuclear development, the built environment of nuclear townships in Britain is overlooked in favour of its technical and scientific elements. Yet the consequences of the atomic programme extend beyond the technological: the social infrastructure behind the science was integral to the success of many nuclear ventures. This had its most significant impact following the 1954 decision to site the country’s first fast breeder reactor establishment at Dounreay in Caithness, the most northerly county of the British mainland. The arrival of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority brought nuclear science to a rural landscape with an agricultural skills base. The chosen site was located close to the town of Thurso, the population of which grew from 3000 to 9000 as a result of the UKAEA ‘importing’ skilled scientists and engineers into the county to work alongside local workers to ensure the safe running of the establishment. To accommodate this influx the town underwent an extensive period of planning, with 1007 houses built to house the new citizens who were termed ‘the atomics’. By the end of the building programme in May 1963, four recognised estates of UKAEA houses had been built in Thurso: Castlegreen, Ormlie, Pennyland and Mount Vernon, with a small number of houses built at Scrabster and Castletown. Accommodating this population stands as an example of quick, complex change, triggered by a technical experiment with enduring social consequences. The housing developments were managed by the Thurso architectural firm of Sinclair Macdonald & Son, whose archives are held by Historic Environment Scotland. The UKAEA-built houses are now owned privately or by Pentland Housing Association.

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