Description

William Henderson & Son, dated 1870. Striking granite tower and spire on plain Gothic rectangular-plan church with 4-bay nave prominently sited on raised ground overlooking Lumphanan village. Harled with rough coursed ashlar granite tower and ashlar reveals. Part base course, mutuled eaves cornice to tower. 2-stage diagonal buttresses; hoodmould with label stops at entrance; leaded diamond-pane windows throughout, traceried to tower and margined to nave. Tower has clock face in diamond-aligned moulded panel, spire has lucarnes.

FURTHER DESCRIPTION: entrance tower to S with broad boarded timber door giving way to 2-light traceried window and clock, further similar windows to each return and, and finialled spire. N elevation has broad 4-light traceried window with coloured fleur-de-lis to each diamond; E elevation with 4 nave windows and small gabled projection at outer right.

Leaded diamond-pane windows throughout, those to tower and N gable traceried, and those to nave with coloured margins. Grey slates. Ashlar-copes skews and skewputts. Cast iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers, and decorative ironwork ventilator grilles.

INTERIOR: simple little-altered interior with fixed timber centre pews, kingpost-type roof on decorative corbels and boarded timber dadoes. Carved pulpit on raised platform with decorative ironwork balusters. Small gallery at S end reached by steep narrow stair. Paired classical memorial tablets to Revd Thomas Stothert, died 1893, and his wife Helen Lundin Brown, died 1880.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical building no longer in use as such. The Stothert Memorial Church sits on an elevated site within rubble enclosure walls which surround a terraced graveyard (to the south and west) with 19th and 20th century gravestones. The striking granite tower with its high quality stone spire is an important part of the interest of the church.

Sited close to the main entrance is an early medieval font which Geddes describes as a "rough boulder bowl 3m in circumference moved from the old parish church to this site".

Based in Aberdeen, brothers William and James Henderson briefly worked together, but by the Disruption of 1843 the partnership had been dissolved. They were both involved in designing buildings for the newly formed Free Church, and William was responsible for approximately one hundred churches and manses. From 1857, the Hendersons were also architects to The Union Bank. William died before 1892, and his son, William Low Henderson, died in 1899 but the practice continued under the name William Henderson & Son after his death.

List description updated 2009.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q56617613

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Sussex: West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Kent: North East and East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)