THE UNIVERSAL HALL

A Sacred Building

The Universal Hall is on a power point formed by a sacred triangle of ley lines with Iona and Glastonbury. The Universal Hall is a sacred building built on sacred lines in sacred proportions, handmade by many people with a huge amount of love and creative ideas. You don’t find many buildings like this in our world anymore. It took ten years to build. The Universal Hall is a powerful building. If performers stand in the right spot, and perform from the heart, you can feel the love radiating out along the ley lines and connecting to this sacred triangle.

Just before the Foundation bought the Findhorn Bay Caravan Park in 1983 Peter and the core group asked me to complete the Hall, for the third World Wilderness Congress the following year. Building work on the Hall had gone dormant for five years. With no money in the community, we’d been put on a strict diet, almost only potatoes. Plus our two main builders, Lyle Schnadt and James Hill had left the Foundation.

François Duquesne, the Community’s focaliser, felt that the Foundation should buy the Caravan Park so we could stop paying huge rents, and have a viable business to run ourselves. This was a big stretch, but the core group tuned in and found that this was the action to take. The first public appeal for funding was a huge success, but we still needed around £1,000 more. The excitement rose as people pledged £1, £10, whatever they could afford, until we raised the final amount in full. After that I couldn’t put out another appeal for the Hall. Peter just said, “Complete the Hall. Find the money.”

A small group of us cleaned the Hall and meditated over many months whilst I prepared a funding application to the Scottish Tourist Board. We needed George Ripley, the architect, for this was his vision of his ‘living working sculpture’. We needed the crew back and we needed to match funding to secure the Tourist Board funds.

A Findhorn miracle happened. The Scottish Tourist Board never gave the full amount requested. Neither did they fund the completion of buildings. But when I rang for the results, they said, “You must have friends in high places.” I heard myself answering, ‘Yes, the Highest!” I think actually that having our local MP to afternoon tea in my bungalow at Vance Martin’s suggestion (who was instrumental in bringing the third World Wilderness Congress to Scotland) had a lot to do with their response. Also, when the Tourist Board inspector came to assess our application, Sandy Barr, the General Secretary, insisted on showing them the building.

More miracles: Lyle returned, James returned, Amanda Hayworth came up with a loan of matching funds, Dennis DeVito turned up as a guest and did all manner of wonderful carpentry, everyone rallied to make George Ripley’s vision come alive again. We were racing against time. I hadn’t planned for stained glass windows, but James Hubble gave us two free designs, and said if we could buy the glass and two air fares from the States, he’d send one of his best students and her boyfriend over to make it.

We were about six weeks away from the Congress.

I had no money for the window, or even a front door! The need went out. Roger Doudna and his father funded the project.

Three weeks later I moved out of my office (the dance studio). By day, James’s students made the wonderful window, panel by panel. And at night they installed it panel by panel, following master craftsman James Hill as he put in the staircases. No one knew if the extreme curve on the acrylic balcony would work. We did a little dance when we took off the protective paper. Another miracle.
We employed local companies where we could, for providing and laying the carpet. But that had a story too. A young Australian who worked for the Wool Board, taught me quickly about carpet pile and what to look for, so that when he gave me his ticket and sent me to the Hospitality Trade Fair in London, I could sound as if I knew what I was doing!

I became so tuned into the final stages of the finishing trades that when a local workman said he’d lost his tool kit, I stopped a moment and said, “You’ve boxed it in there, just unscrew that panel and you’ll find it.” It took him about three hours before he’d follow my advice. And there it was. He was very surprised. At that time there were very few young female project managers on Scottish building sites, let alone one with no building qualifications whatsoever.

The day before the opening, the wrong colour doormats arrived. I told the foreman he had to make three phone calls and we’d have the right mats. He too was surprised, but to his credit he made the phone calls and we got the mats just in time.

We worked all that night cleaning. The gardeners brought wonderful boxes of daffodils. The whole place shone with love and light, it really did. At about 8.30am we hid in the garden and watched the first busload of Congress participants walk to the Hall. They opened the door and said, Wow!
That’s all we needed! On time and on budget, we’d achieved much more than we’d planned, thanks to all the people who’d hung wallpaper, painted, did carpentry, electrics and everything that goes into a building. What a privilege to work with the Hall energy.

Caroline Shaw