St Catherine's Argyle Church, Grange Road, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Edinburgh

Entry Name: St Catherine's Argyle Church, Grange Road, Edinburgh

Listing Name: Grange Road and Chalmers Crescent, St Catherine's Argyle Church Including Gatepiers

Listing Date: 15 January 1992

Category: C

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 371268

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB30386

Building Class: Cultural

ID on this website: 200371268

Location: Edinburgh

County: Edinburgh

Town: Edinburgh

Electoral Ward: Southside/Newington

Traditional County: Midlothian

Tagged with: Church building

Description

Patrick Wilson, 1866. Symmetrical Continental Gothic church. T-plan with projecting stair blocks, and single storey offices and church hall; octagonal belfry to SW re-entrant angle; square section tower base to SE (never completed). Squared and snecked Craigmillar sandstone with polished ashlar dressings. Base course; decorative carved eaves course to S gable; contrasting pink granite colonettes and nook-shafts; foliate capitals and label-stops; offset gablet-capped angle butresses with panelled upper sections; pointed-arch windows.

NAVE: gabled entrance elevation to S; 3 gabled ashlar panels at ground with cusping detail; broad pointed-arch door to centre; paired colonettes flanking with double fleuron studded and moulded surround above; quatrefoil in gablehead; 2-leaf panelled doors; blinded fanlight; windows in flanking bays with single colonettes and decorative surround. Broad hoodmoulded window with geometric tracery and colonettes above; vesica at gablehead.

W RETURN ELEVATION TO NAVE: octagonal tower in re-entrant angle (see below); 2 narrow bays divided by buttress; slender geometric windows at ground and quatrefoil oculi above.

OCTAGONAL BELFRY: 3-stage with dividing string courses; rectangular base, chamfered to octagonal at 2nd stage. Simple hoodmoulded windows to alternate faces at 2nd stage. Pointed-arch openings with nook-shafts to each face of bell chamber; polygonal roof.

TRUNCATED TOWER TO S: 2-stage; upper stage with hoodmoulded deeply embrasured windows and corbelled coping to flat roof.

TRANSEPTS: 5-light window with colonette mullions at ground and large rose window above, hoodmoulded to W; trefoil at apex; E window at ground obscured by modern addition.

N ELEVATION: piend-roofed stair towers projecting from gabled bay at centre with tall 4-light traceried window; gablehad stack.

SINGLE STOREY CHURCH HALL AND VESTRY: separate buildings adjoining church; rectangular-plan; chamfered angels; cusped windows at intervals; gabled bay breaking eaves to E and W respectively.

INTERIOR: coverted to hall by masking original windows with timber louvres and suspending new ceiling from double braced timber roof and galleries (1972); floreate stone corbels (painted); cast-iron columns to former S gallery (now organ gallery); gothic traceried timber pulpit from St Margaret's, Juniper Green; mid to late 20th century organ salvaged from Argyle Place Church (demolished 1974); timber altar with gothic details; life-size Sicilian marble medalion portrait of Horatius Bonar in vestibule, sculpted by George J Webster in 1890; patterned stained glass to traceried N window (above suspended ceiling).

Grey slate pitched roof with fishscale banding; gables coped with overlapping stone slabs; stone cross finial to S gable; cast-iron weathervane finial to belfry; corniced gablehead stack to N; ridge stack to offices; 2 conical-capped ventilators to church hall.

Low coped rubble wall to Chalmers Crescent and Grange Road; high coped rubble mutual wall to N; ashlar gatepiers with chamfered angles, pyramidal coping, and polygonal bases to cast-iron lamp standards (lamps missing); modern cast-iron or steel gates with cast vesica panels.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical building in use as such. The church was originally referred to as Grange Free Church, but was more formally known as the Chalmers Memorial Free Church, in commemoration of the great Disruption leader, Dr Thomas Chalmers. The first minister was Dr Horatius Bonar, the famous hymn writer. The church has changed its name on several occasions, the last being in 1968 when the congregation merged with that of Argyle Place Church and adopted the name "St Catherin's Argle". A spire was projected to the SE of the main entrtance, but due to a lack of funds only the base was ever built.

External Links

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