After four years, our community once again has a brand new Sanctuary! From the provenance of the beams to the benches to the barrels, there are many significant stories to tell – and the Findhorn Hinterland Trust played an important role every step of the way.

Light of Findhorn Sanctuary Photo: Mark Richards
Easter Sunday, 20 April 2025 – the day the new sanctuary was completed and opened for the first time – was significant for the whole community at the Park Ecovillage Findhorn and beyond. This project and building has become a symbol of hope and renewal to many. The FHT is proud to have been involved in this community project and I want to take a moment to reflect on all that our land, members, benefactors and volunteer team have contributed to over the past four years.
On 13 April 2021 the fires, an act of arson, ravished and totally destroyed the old sanctuary that had been providing a place to gather and enjoy peace and spiritual sustenance for over 53 years.
FHT had started clearing a site for the Conservation Hub that January, and by February a team of people were stripping bark off poles in the snow for its construction. In September of that year the foundations went in and on 19 February 2022 it was finally completed and we celebrated its opening.
The Hub building was important for the charity as it gave us a number of things that encouraged us to get involved in the sanctuary build: confidence and skills to prepare and use round wood in construction, particularly aided by Henry Fosbrooke, a master in the art, and Sean Brechin who oversaw the Hub build; links with local timber miller Ben Moore, who brought in his portable mill to produce construction timber; and our hard work and achievement attracted the attention of a couple of important funders, including the Hygeia Foundation and a generous community member who remained anonymous. This donation of over £3000 helped pay for the subsequent work the charity undertook on the sanctuary.
FHT is a great believer in never making a good catastrophe go to waste! That’s what happened when storm Arwen struck on the 25 November 2021, resulting in over one hundred trees in Wilkies Wood being blown down. Our Land Manager, Kajedo, set to work felling the trees and I pulled them out using our wee grey Fergie tractor. They were to be either milled by Ben then stacked and covered by FHT volunteers, or stripped, covered and stored as round construction wood by a merry band of young and old within our community.
Much of this was done before the Sanctuary design was finalised, during a design charette event around the 20th March 2022. Hinterland prepared timber was going to be used for the main round columns and beams of the new structure and some of the cut wood for roof sarking.
A number of the Scots Pine trees had been planted in the early 1960s by my father in what became the Wild Garden. The intense sanctuary fires had left them cooked and burnt inside, so on 17 March 2022 they were felled and our tractor again removed them. Two of the lengths were subsequently used to make up a portion of the five main beams of the sanctuary structure. The rest of the trees were milled by Ben for the Findhorn Foundation gardeners and they lay seasoning outside the garden tool shed. In the week of 24 November 2024 they were converted into benches for the new sanctuary’s vestibule and sitting-out area (a sitooterie in Scots!) – you can read about the benches here. They were moved to the sanctuary on 25 January 2025 and subsequently installed along with the coat hook panels on 2 February.
Back in the autumn of 2022 FHT got involved with its own volunteers and equipment, along with the Findhorn Foundation gardeners, in clearing the sanctuary site. The landscaping rocks were going to be recycled when needed for the new building, we cleared the plants and trees, including a half-burnt apple tree that was dug up and replanted successfully in the new Woodside garden.
By November we were starting to remove the wooden sheds that had become important and well-used offices as the community grew in the 1970s and 80s, and were still in operation before the fires. First to go was the cooks office on 8 November, the computer office on 10 November and finally the Park Campus office on 2 February 2023. The General Office and food shed were finally removed by the site contractor’s machines on 5 October 2023, after many years of faithful service to the community.
We tried to recycle everything we could from these buildings, being particularly successful with the computer office. This was completely rotten at the base but otherwise in fair condition. Before taking it apart we measured it and it just happened to fit almost exactly the metal trailer frame with an insulated floor we had prepared back in April 2022. So we cut the rotten studs at the base and had Ruari and Jason of Greenleaf Design and Build get in their machine to physically pick it up and set it on the base. Almost instantly we had a shepherd’s hut to be used for FHT long-term volunteers on the land! After installing a wood stove and covered verandah, as well as repainting and re-roofing it back at the Conservation Hub, we moved it into Wilkies Wood on 28 April 2023 and had the grand opening as part of that year’s May Day celebrations.
Also in autumn 2022, after the site had been marked out by the surveyor on 28 October, we selected and cut poles in Wilkies Wood and erected them on the sanctuary site, strung together with ropes to physically show everyone the dimensions of the new building. This basic 3D model was appreciated during the large gathering of community members on the site for a blessing as part of the 60th community birthday celebrations on 17 November 2022.
Another FHT contribution was to remove a large redwood tree that was beginning to threaten Cornelia Featherstone’s house situated on the way up to the Universal Hall. It had been felled by a local tree surgeon, after permission had reluctantly been given, helped by the intention to use the wood as part of the new sanctuary build. The logs that were removed in March 2023 have yet to be converted to furniture, but the remaining stump had a 20cm section cut off and sanded – it is now the centerpiece for candles and flowers in the new sanctuary. It looks and feels so appropriate that the tree is honoured in this way.
A now unseen but significant effort by FHT volunteers was helping to dig the large soakaway for the building. This involved taking up the turf on most of the original garden lawn, stacking it out of the way for the digger to come in and create a huge hole, which was then filled with gravel before the turf was re laid. At this time, a midden of shells and burnt wood was discovered when digging the sanctuary foundations. I informed archaeologist Michael Sharpe – you can read about this find here.
It wasn’t until 23 April 2024 that the building foundations were dug and the concrete poured on 26 April. In June the selected structural poles, which had been stored in anticipation of the build, were moved down to the FHT Conservation Hub for final preparation, before they were moved to site and and erected in September. We also used the tractor to deliver sarking stored up in Wilkies Wood that was used in the roof.
The final act was the landscaping – bringing the new building into harmony with the original caravan, the large cleared area where the former shed offices had been, and the original garden. Some of the milled wood was moved onto site and a group of FHT volunteers used it to create a small fence to protect the seeded grass area. Rocks that had been stored up at the wind turbines had to be selected and loaded onto the tractor to be transported and carried onto site, to be crafted into walls or edging. Topsoil, gravel and mulching material had to be wheelbarrowed into position. Most of this I did myself as an act of connection and love for this place where I grew up. I was born in the original caravan before it was moved to where it sits now, and I lived there from the age of six – with my two brothers, mother, father and friend Dorothy Maclea – for seven years, seeing and living off the expanding garden that became so important as a ray of hope to the world.
It was special to go to Greens Nursery in Nairn on 9 April 2025 and take time to select the plants to enhance the building and surroundings. Long-term community member John Willorner and I had asked if we could collect a few of the whisky barrel planters from Cluny Hill Hotel, as a symbolic connection to this place that had housed thousands of guests for the community since it was bought in 1975. We loaded them onto the Findhorn Foundation bus along with the soil. By the time they were looking magnificent with the new plants in them, Cluny had been sold after 50 years of community service – we were glad we had taken time to gather this small memento.
Recently I heard a long-term community member say it was such a pity that people could not get involved in the building of the sanctuary, as had been the case in the 1970s with the Universal Hall. I was wondering where they were when the call for help went out! I am personally satisfied with what the charity has been able to offer our local community and very pleased that we could fulfil one of our charitable purposes, which is to help build local community, in this way.
Jonathan Caddy
FHT Chair
20 May 2025
Chair’s Report – Spring/Summer 2025
As I write it’s only May and yet it feels like summer is already upon us, with so many sunny days, warmth in the air and the trees, plants, birds, bees and other creatures making hay whilst the sun shines! We could do with rain because of the mounting fire risk but I am sure it will come all in its good time.
Jonathan Caddy, beekeeper and chair of FHT
FHT apiary bees are happy with nine out of 11 hives having made it through the winter, most now with strongly laying queens. We started weekly inspections at the end of April and have a few more people joining our core team of Martin Harker, John Willoner and I. It’s so important to pass on both our knowledge and enthusiasm so that future generations can learn and enjoy the gentle and rewarding art of beekeeping. Thank you to new member Mathijs, as well as Amanda, Goran and others, for stepping up to the mark. Great also to have visiting Gina Pattison and her son and daughter join the first inspection – read what they thought about the experience.
With the fine weather the regular monthly work parties have also been well attended – during the winter there were surprisingly few people who came along to these worthwhile educational and community-building events. Two of note were tree planting on the southern edge of Wilkies Wood, where blown pines had been removed in the winter by Kajedo, our Land Manager, and small Scots Pines were transplanted from elsewhere in the woods; and the other was a productive team that helped in the Woodland Garden, some on the new adopt a plot scheme that Draeyk has put in place.
FHT trustees have moved forward on two significant developments during this period. We have a change in green burial rates/way forward for this important part of the trust (also see Laura Shreenan’s article on the environmental impact of these burials), and have also decided to employ Laura from May to September in the position of Chair Support. Laura will help with the conscious, significant structural change FHT is going through as I step down as Chair in September, and how the charity is going to continue well into the future in a sustainable and resilient way. There will be more no doubt to say about this in the next newsletter, as with the prospective new trustees that should be joining the board this month.
Jonathan Caddy
FHT Chair
11th May 2025