As 2020 ended, residents of Strathblane and Blanefield had received a total of £52,239 in response to their crowdfunding appeal. Together with the donations that already received, led by Angus Graham’s £500,000, Strathblane Community Development Trust (SCDT) has now commissioned work to start on a planning application to Stirling Council. Construction is scheduled to begin in June.

SCDT has now established a wholly-owned subsidiary company, Thomas Graham Library Ltd, to build and own the library on behalf of the village.

It has given the go-ahead to architects Thomas Robinson of Croftamie to prepare a planning application.

“To say we are amazed and delighted at the commitment and generosity of our community for this project is a big understatement,” said SCDT chair Margaret Vass.

“We’ve never tried anything like this before, so we were a bit nervous about how people would respond.

We shouldn’t have been: there’s no doubt how passionate everyone is to see this vital new community asset come to life.”

Margaret stresses that the library fund will remain open for further donations.

She added: “While we have now secured the basic budget that we believe we need to create this striking building that the architects have produced for us, it’s still our ambition to fit it out with the very best equipment and systems that we can afford.

“So every pound extra that we can raise will go into improving the specification of, for example, the IT system that will go in to the community rooms, including video - conferencing facilities to enable delivery of the online courses that people have said they’d like to happen.”

In addition to the crowdfunding donations, SCDT has also been successful in securing a pledge to give £30,000 to the library appeal from the Hugh Fraser Foundation in Glasgow. This charity was set up in memory of the late Sir Hugh Fraser, who lived at Mugdock and was one of Scotland’s most prominent businessmen of the 1970s and 80s. Son of the founder of the Fraser Stores group,