St James Church, 119 Constitution Street, Leith, Edinburgh, Leith, Edinburgh

Entry Name: St James Church, 119 Constitution Street, Leith, Edinburgh

Listing Name: 119 Constitution Street, St James's Church with Church Officer's House, Hall, Boundary Walls and Gatepiers

Listing Date: 14 December 1970

Category: B

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 364302

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB27226

Building Class: Cultural

Also known as: Edinburgh, Leith, 119 Constitution Street, St James Church

ID on this website: 200364302

Location: Edinburgh

County: Edinburgh

Town: Edinburgh

Electoral Ward: Leith

Traditional County: Midlothian

Tagged with: Church building Architectural structure

Description

George Gilbert Scott (R Rowand Anderson assistant), 1862-5; church hall D J Chisholm of Dick Peddie, Todd & Jamieson, 1936-7. Small early gothic cruciform-plan church with narthex, aisled nave, apsidal E end and tall SE tower, separate church officer?s house to NW, adjoining hall. Cream sandstone, squared and snecked rubble with polished dressings. Base course; moulded cill course; sloping cills; off-set gablet-capped buttresses; roll-moulded pointed-arch principal openings with hoodmoulds; chamfered reveals to lesser openings; boarded timber doorways with ornamental ironwork.

NARTHEX AND W FRONT: 3-bay lean-to narthex spanning centre of W front; gabled and finialled doorway to centre with buttresses; tripartite arcaded windows to outer bays with foliate capitals to slender mullions, trefoiled heads and angel heads as label stops; doorways on returns. Gabled and finialled elevation above narthex with 3 tall bipartite windows with quatrefoil plate tracery, vesica with carved surround to gablehead.

NAVE, TRANSEPTS AND CHANCEL: S aisle with 3 tripartite windows with trefoiled plate tracery divided by buttresses. N aisle with 3 tripartite windows of stepped lancets divided by buttresses; canted vestry (1881) in re-entrant angle with chancel. 2-bay M-gabled transepts with angle buttresses, windows detailed as aisle windows, secondary doorways with nook-shafts and carved label stops. Engaged tower in re-entrant angle of S transept and chancel. 2-bay lower chancel with conical roof to 3-bay apsidal E end.

TOWER: 3-stage; angle buttresses; heavy base with lancet window to E, small bipartite stair windows and secondary doorway to S, octagonal stair turret with small windows beneath half-pyramidal roof to S.

2 bipartite windows with quatrefoil plate tracery to E at 2nd stage, arrowslit windows above. Top stage with large louvred bipartite windows with nook-shafts and heavily moulded surrounds to all sides. Ashlar spire with fishscale carved corner pinnacles and 4 ashlar lucarnes (spire truncated 1977).

HALLS: single storey 5-bay church hall (1936-7) adjoining vestry with segmental-arched openings and central doorpiece incorporating late 16th century inscribed stone. Polygonal projecting stone porch to outer right with segmental-arched doorway on flank and polygonal slate roof. Coped rubble parapet and slate piended roof. Small-pane metal windows with decorative border glazing and top hoppers.

Most windows (if not replaced) of leaded diamond panes. Black slate roof with stone ridge. Moulded eaves gutter and gutterheads.

INTERIOR: disused. Impressive wagon roof braced with lattice trusses rising from slender shafts; chancel with continuous pointed-arch arcade incorporating windows to E, blind panels painted with figures of saints in trefoil panels. Originally extensive stained glass scheme of which only W window survives (Clayton & Bell, 1865). See Notes.

CHURCH OFFICER?S HOUSE: 2-storey with 1st floor in part attic, L-plan house with crowstepped gables, bipartite and tripartite windows with chamfered reveals, ashlar mullions and relieving arches over, crowstepped stone porch with pointed-arch doorway and crowstepped dormer above to S elevation. Plate glass and 4-pane timber sash and case windows. Slate roof.

BOUNDARY WALLS AND GATEPIERS: low ashlar wall to front, octagonal ashlar gatepiers with pyramidal heads and cast-iron lamp standards (right part missing).

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical building now secularised and used as temporary joiner?s workshop, most of the fittings and the stained glass have been removed (1992). The interior had been re-seated and given a new pulpit in 1908 by Peddie and Washington Browne. The reredos of 1873, designed by Clarke and executed by Thomas Earp, alabaster, marble and mosaic, was moved without listed building consent to Balgone House, North Berwick.

External Links

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