Erskine United Free Church, Kinghorn Road, Burntisland, Burntisland, Fife

Description

John Bennie Wilson, 1903. Gothic church with entrance tower. 3-bay nave with side aisles and angle buttresses. Rock-faced rubble with polished ashlar dressings and dressed ashlar tower, 2-stage saw-tooth coped buttresses, 2-stage chamfered plinth, moulded string course incorporating continuous hoodmould, architraved cornice. Reticulated traceried S window, hoodmoulds with foliate label stops, chamfered reveals and stone mullions. Part-glazed 2-leaf panelled doors.

S ELEVATION: 2-stage gable end with 3 bipartite cusped windows and flanking buttresses, large 5-light window at 2nd stage, flanked by coped batter of buttresses to impost height; angled skew blocks at wallhead and Celtic cross finial at gablehead.

TOWER: 4-stage entrance tower with clasping polygonal tower to SW corner. Flight of 10 steps with flanking 2-stage walls leading to door in heavily moulded pointed-arch door frame, cusped niche in tympanum below hoodmould with label stop to right and continuous hoodmould to left encompassing polygonal tower; buttress to right and narrow light to left on polygonal angle stair tower, further narrow cusped light to W face. Saw-tooth coped batter with decorative corbel table above door giving way to 2nd stage with narrow cusped light near top; W face with

2 light plate traceried window, narrow light in stair tower and narrow cusped light near top; narrow cusped light to N face over slope of nave roof. 3rd stage, S face with narrow light to left on stair tower over string course, clock with Roman numerals to centre and further narrow light to stair tower. Batter giving way to 4th stage belfry with traceried louvred opening to each face, moulded string course encompassing stair tower with water spouts, blind arcade to parapet with corner piers and bird-finialled roof; open arcade to finialled crocketed conically-roofed caphouse at SW.

E ELEVATION: 2-bay nave in advanced face to centre and right with 4 high cusped bipartite windows at ground floor and panelled door below sloping-roof adjoining small projecting choir and linked to hall at outer right; saw-tooth coped battered buttress to left: batter with central and outer right pier giving way to 4-light panel traceried window to right and left below continuous hoodmould and architraved cornice, 2 slated louvred vents high on roof pitch. Re-entrant to left with low battered buttress to left of 4 steps leading to gabled part-glazed panelled door in moulded pointed-arch doorcase with hoodmould and label stops, cusped bipartite window on return to left, off-line moulded string course above.

W ELEVATION: 2-bay nave with tower in re-entrant to right, 4 cusped bipartite windows to left below 2 panel traceried windows as detailed above, 2 slated louvred vents high on roof pitch. Low saw-tooth coped battered buttress to outer left with part-glazed 2-leaf door in moulded depressed-arch doorcase below sloping roof adjoining small projecting choir.

N ELEVATION: tiered gables of chancel and nave each with Celtic cross finials, pointed arch of blinded window in chancel just visible over pitched roof of hall.

Stained glass to S window (see below), all other windows glazed with margined, square-pattern coloured leaded lights. Small grey slates with red ridge-tiles. Ashlar coped skews with mitre and flat skewputts, cast-iron downpipes and decorative rainwater hoppers.

INTERIOR: galleried. Leaded-light arcaded screen to narthex; stone stair to tower with decorative cast-iron balusters and timber handrail to gallery. Screen wall to nave with memorial tablets. Wide nave with narrow aisles, 2 pointed-arches to E and W, and 1 to N with organ in converted choir. Polished ashlar piers with octagonal bases and round shafts give way to full-height moulded arches springing from foliate capitals and corbels carrying timber gallery to S, E and W. Timber bench pews at ground, tiered pews with panelled and fretwork fronts to galleries and open timbered-roof with corbelled hammerbeams and decorated centre beam. Part-glazed timber doors flanking platform at W with Communion Table and elders' seating; 2 short flights of steps with finialled newel-posts flanking canted pulpit with blind timber arcading at centre, blind timber arcade with sounding-board, 5-part organ with flanking timber screens and blinded N window, all framed within stone archway.

5 light S window by N K Pink of The Abbey Studio, 1921; on theme The Light of The World including scenes of Moses guided by the Light, Paul's conversion, Jesus healing the blind and the Star in the East.

Clock machinery in SW tower with original instruction sheet for "Winding, Regulating and Oiling Clock."

HALL: single storey session room and vestry, gabled L-plan hall with bird-finialled bellcast-roofed square lantern. Rock-faced rubble to W, stugged elsewhere, ashlar quoins, dressings, skews and skewputts. Cusped bipartite windows flanking low saw-tooth-coped battered buttress on advanced gable to W, 2 bipartite windows on return to left and bipartite window on recessed face also to left.

BOUNDARY WALLS, GATEPIERS AND GATES: coped, bull-faced rubble boundary walls and square gatepiers with blind, cusped tripartite arcading below triangular cope with decorative cast-iron arch dated '1738-1988' and decorative cast-iron gates to S. Stepped and coped boundary walls with oblong gatepiers and decorative cast-iron gate to W; semicircular coped rubble boundary walls to E and rubble boundary walls to N.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical building in use as such.

The earlier church of 1738 was situated in the High Street where the Public Library now stands, a model of the old building is kept in the church. Built of soft creamy-white stone from quarry near Dunfermline and opened 14th October 1903, at a cost of ?6445. The site was donated by Mr James Shepherd of Rossend Castle "out of respect for your worthy pastor and hard-working Kirk Session". "The bell provided by Provost Connel and Mr William Inglis, of Airdrie, son of the Session Clerk". "The lighting of the new church was by the old-fashioned flat-flamed burners", but "In August, 1909, incandescent gas lighting was introduced, the pendants being controlled by pneumatic switches". "In 1921 Mrs William Inglis of Airdrie, presented to the congregation, in memory of her husband and his father and mother, the stained glass window opposite the pulpit".

Installed as a Congregational War Memorial, the organ by Messrs Hilsdon of Glasgow, was completed by 22nd July 1922, A single dial clock with Westminster chimes by Gillett & Johnston of Croydon was a gift from Miss Macomish in October 1925, together with ?100 "to be invested as an endowment for the upkeep of the clock", full instructions (dated 1912) are pinned to the timber cabinet housing the fully functional clock.

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