Concerns have been raised over possible plans to demolish the Partick church ravaged by an early morning blaze.
St Simon's Catholic Church has stood on Partick Bridge Street for over 160 years but has been reduced to a 'charred shell' following the fire on Wednesday.
The building's roof, interior, and upper walls all succumbed to the flames while a stained glass window installed in 2013 by the Parish Council has also been lost leading to fears that the remaining facade may have to be demolished.
Investigations are currently underway into the cause of the fire and whether full demolition will be necessary for the safety of the building, but local conservationists have called for the facade to be maintained and the church rebuilt.
Niall Murphy, of Glasgow Heritage and Govanhil Baths, hopes that engineers will be able to save as much of the building as possible to ensure the tradition of the building can live on.
He said: "With buildings like this, it is possible to save them. The difficulty you don’t know what the impact of the fire is going to be on the stone because of how the stone is formed.
"It's a sedimentary stone, it’s laid down over geological time so you don’t know what it’s composed of and what’s inside it. Each stone can react in a different way to the fire. You don’t know how it's going to weaken it.
"Ultimately it’s going to come down to what an engineer says about it and ultimately, I hope that the church would be able to call on a qualified conservation engineer who would be conscious of these issues and would be looking for a way to save the building because obviously its been there for 160 years, it's the third oldest in Glasgow, it's a very popular church, it's got links to the polish community.
"I would hope that they would try and save as much as they could with the hope of rebuilding."
Any possible restoration would be for the second time as the church was completely restored between 2005 and 2008 for its 150th anniversary. A £200,000 grant from Historic Scotland was matched by funding from the congregation to carry out the work.
The adjoining clergy house, where the church's keeper was staying, has also sustained damage to its upper floor but is structurally intact. It's not known what will happen to the house if the church is razed to the ground.
Mr Murphy hopes it can be used for something 'meaningful for the congregation and community'.
He adds: "Glasgow’s heritage is finite, you’ll never get it back. Particularly in that neck of the woods, everything around there has gone that was original Victorian urban fabric, that part of Partick was cleared away. So it's one of the very few links that's left to the past.
"Certainly the house next door has survived and is only partially damaged. It would be really nice to see if they could reconstruct that and I think that would be very meaningful for the congregation and community. I hope would that that link with tradition could be sustained."
Paul Sweeney MSP has also called for the 'maximum preservation' of the building.
He said: "I'm concerned about hasty attempts to totally demolish St. Simon's Church in Partick. The facade has already been reduced on the western side facing Partick Bridge Street. Heritage accredited engineers should be commissioned to ensure maximum preservation of the building remains."
A spokesperson for Historic Environment Scotland said: “We were saddened to hear about the fire at St Simon’s Church and have been in touch with the local authority to offer our advice and guidance.”
