An urgent fundraising appeal has been launched to raise £15,000 to save an Easter Ross heritage centre from closure.
Alness Heritage Centre, owned by Alness Community Association, needs £5,000 to help re-stock their shop and another £10,000 to employ someone to manage the centre.
The money is needed because current centre manager, Joan Ross, has been ill and has struggled to organise local events to raise the necessary funds to keep it open.
Mrs Ross also stressed that finding enough volunteers to run the centre has proved difficult.
Yesterday the 75-year-old said: “I’ve been quite bad this year (heart problem) and we’re just suddenly not gathering enough money to keep ourselves open, and it’s worrying me terribly. We’ve put so much work into it and I hate the idea that anything will happen. It would be terrible if we had to close.
“A lot of people in Alness would be really upset if we did lose it.”
The Alness Heritage Centre was bought over by the community association in 1999, with the help of a £50,000 loan from the Charity Bank and Alness Civic and Heritage Centre.
At the time, a supermarket had shown an interest in converting the building but the community association managed to foil their plans.
Mrs Ross wanted a place in Alness to document the social history of the area, particularly during the war when men from around the world came to train to fly various aircraft, and to show the industrial progress locally.
Hundreds of photographs line the shelves, as well as artefacts ranging from old tools and ornaments to an old cart horse in their garden.
The online fundraising site can be found by typing the words Save Alness Heritage Centre into Google, or by visiting the site at www.crowdfunder.co.uk
Alness Community Association also helped drive donations to help restore a war memorial in the town last year.
About 200 people attended the opening of the restored memorial in September to honour local men and women who lost their lives in World War 1.
The structure was erected and unveiled in 1921 to commemorate those from Alness and Wester Rosskeen who sacrificed their lives during the conflict.
The names of those who subsequently died in WWII were added in 1949 and the memorial was rededicated.
In total, it lists 114 local people who made the ultimate sacrifice – 85 in WWI, 28 in WWII and one in Northern Ireland.
