An­na-Lisa Paul

The bat­tle to save what is left of the his­tor­i­cal Greyfri­ars Church of Scot­land, in down­town Port-of-Spain, took a new twist with the State mov­ing to ac­quire it un­der the Na­tion­al Trust as a her­itage site.The move came even as the build­ing con­tin­ues to de­te­ri­o­rate, with its roof cav­ing in on Mon­day, and the rub­ble in the yard pro­vid­ing a breed­ing ground for the aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to–which spreads the dengue and chikun­gun­ya virus­es.

Al­though the gates to the prop­er­ty are locked, home­less peo­ple now oc­cu­py the premis­es at night, ac­cord­ing to em­ploy­ees at near­by stores.The build­ing's own­er, Al­fred Galy, now has to pro­vide the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion with a de­tailed plan of how he in­tends to clear the site and pre­serve the fa­cade of the church.Work­men pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed con­cern that the roof of the church hall con­tained as­bestos–a po­ten­tial­ly haz­ardous ma­te­r­i­al.

The cor­po­ra­tion took Galy to court af­ter he de­mol­ished the church hall and be­gan tear­ing down the church last No­vem­ber. The cor­po­ra­tion ob­tained an in­junc­tion pre­vent­ing him from con­tin­u­ing the de­mo­li­tion.That le­gal mat­ter came up for hear­ing in the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day and the in­junc­tion re­mains in force un­til Jan­u­ary 16.

Chief Build­ing In­spec­tor at the cor­po­ra­tion De­o­raj Ram­ta­hal said yes­ter­day that fol­low­ing the court hear­ing, Galy and his at­tor­neys ac­com­pa­nied him and oth­er of­fi­cials to the site.Galy said yes­ter­day that though he re­tained own­er­ship of the build­ing, he had been re­strict­ed from car­ry­ing out any clear­ing work be­cause of the in­junc­tion.

He said on­ly yes­ter­day he re­ceived an ad­vi­so­ry from the Min­istry of Health about en­sur­ing his busi­ness premis­es were clean–in or­der to stem the spread of the dengue and chikun­gun­ya virus­es."It is in the mid­dle of the city. We have de­bris ac­cu­mu­lat­ing and wa­ter as well, but they are telling me not to do any­thing. It's dan­ger­ous and could crum­ble any­time."

Not­ing the roof had col­lapsed, Galy said, "The wall on the south­ern side could crum­ble any­time. The on­ly part that is sta­ble is the west­ern-fac­ing wall, where the steeple is," Galy said.Galy said the re­sul­tant health is­sues al­so need­ed to be ad­dressed quick­ly.

Ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary of the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion, Michele Ce­les­tine, said yes­ter­day the de­mo­li­tion work "put every­thing at risk."

How­ev­er, she was hap­py that dis­cus­sions were con­tin­u­ing with Galy as to how the re­main­ing struc­ture could be pre­served. Ce­les­tine said Gov­ern­ment was con­cerned about re­tain­ing some as­pect of that build­ing in the new struc­ture.

No­tice of Na­tion­al Trust

In a no­tice pub­lished in the Gazette on De­cem­ber 8, 2014, the Coun­cil of the Na­tion­al Trust stat­ed its in­ten­tion to list the Greyfri­ars Church of Scot­land as a her­itage site.The church is to be named as part of the Wood­ford Square His­tor­i­cal Dis­trict.The no­tice was signed by chair­man of the Na­tion­al Trust Prof Win­ston Suite.

The no­tice de­scribes the site as "Two con­tigu­ous parcels of land in the City of Port of Spain com­pris­ing 1,791.1 square me­tres on which are lo­cat­ed the Greyfri­ars Church and Hall, num­bered 50 and 52 Fred­er­ick Street, Port of Spain. Bound­ed on the north by 54 Fred­er­ick Street, on the south by 48 Fred­er­ick Street, 66 and 68 Prince Street, on the east by 52, 53, 55 and 57 Hen­ry Street."

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Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty Min­is­ter Rodger Samuel con­firmed that dis­cus­sions were con­tin­u­ing with Galy.How­ev­er, he de­clined to com­ment on the roof col­laps­ing and the struc­tur­al sta­bil­i­ty of the re­main­ing build­ing.

The church hall was com­plete­ly de­mol­ished on No­vem­ber 30, while the north­ern wall of the church and half of the roof were al­so tak­en down.The east­ern, west­ern and south­ern walls re­mained stand­ing, ex­posed to the el­e­ments, as work­men were pre­vent­ed from en­ter­ing the site due to an in­junc­tion se­cured by the cor­po­ra­tion to pre­vent any fur­ther work.