A church could be turned into a visitor centre celebrating the life of a scientist who inspired Einstein.
Parton Community Council believe the village kirk is set to close.
And they are exploring the possibility of turning it into a centre dedicated to James Clerk Maxwell, who is buried in the church grounds.
A feasibility study is currently being prepared with locals invited to give their views at an event last week.
Community council chairman Paul Hodson said: “There are no church services going on at the moment – the local presbytery was abolished and went into the south west region so nobody has got round to putting the final line through for closure.
“We got a bit of funding to do a feasibility on whether the community could make use of the building, but we’re conscious we don’t want to create a white elephant.
“The James Clerk Maxwell Foundation are supporting us to do something to commemorate him.
“We’re having a feasibility study done and we’ll have a report back to decide whether it’s feasible to do something.
“We don’t think we can do it on volunteers, it would have to be a paying concern.”
James Clerk Maxwell, who lived from 1831 to 1879, discovered that visible light propagates as electromagnetic waves and defined equations that govern these waves – enabling all the technology of today.
Other achievements include calculating the make-up of Saturn’s rings and presenting the first ever colour photograph of the planet.
“People would rather see something done than not but whether those people turn out to help is a different matter.”
