IT was one of the strangest vessels ever to leave the Clyde - a seaborne church complete with a pulpit and room for 400 worshippers.

And now ambitious plans have been launched to bring ashore one of the last surviving relics of the floating church of Loch Sunart after it was rediscovered deep beneath the waves.

The Church was launched in 1846 following the schism by the Church of Scotland and the Free Church, when members of the breakaway faction were prevented by landowners in the Highlands from gathering on their land.

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Reckoning that the sea belonged to God, they commissioned the Glen Shipbuilding yard in Port Glasgow to build them a place of worship at a cost of £1400 which could ride upon the waves, and had it towed north to the loch where it was anchored firmly to the seabed.

Said to resembled a vast iron shed, the church was used for services for many years with parishioners brought onboard on boats.

However, it was driven ashore during a storm and eventually sold for scrap after permission was finally given for a new church to be built on land in 1869.

It was thought that no large physical remains of the church survived, until divers checking moorings on boats in the loch uncovered one of the four main anchors buried in the bay.

For more than a century the heavy metal object has lain undisturbed, but now campaigners are hoping to raise £6,000 to have it brought to the surface and preserved.

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The mushroom-shaped anchor will then be given pride of place in the nearby village of Strontian, complete with a plaque telling the church's tale.

A video to highlight the campaign has been produced, featuring the broadcaster and musician Mary Ann Kennedy], who lives nearby and has lent her voice to the Raise The Anchor campaign. A fundraising page on the Crowdfunder website has been set up.

Ms Kennedy said: "This is the last surviving link in an important piece of history. Not just Scottish history, but the history of the Free Church."

Isobel Baker, the Local Development Officer at the Sunart Community Company, said that there was a lot of interest in the community over the find.

She said: "The Church vanished a long time ago, so there is nobody who remembers it in the community now. But it has entered local folklore and there has been a lot of research about it.

"People are really excited about it. Everybody has always thought it is a really good story, and now we have this artifact that we can put on show.

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"What usually happens is that these stories get forgotten over time, but if we can actually recover this link to the past it gives everyone an excuse to tell the story all over again."