Description

Campbell Douglas and Stevenson, architects, 1865-6 important interior with glass by Morris and Co. Gothic style church with nave and clerestorey, aisles and tall slender spire to tower at NW, sited dramatically atop Royston Hill. Stugged ashlar with polished dressings, mostly simple plate tracery, some Y-tracery.

CHURCH: tall rectangular buttressed church with main entrance to centre of W gable; subsidiary entrances to tower and S aisle. Main portal pointed arched with nook shafts with stiff leaf capitals. Roll-moulded square- headed door with double-leaf doors, above this recessed

pointed arched panel with blind tracery. Other doorways similarly but less elaborately detailed. Above main portal, pair of Y-traceried lancets with moulded archivolts and shafted reveals, above these in gable head, 4-light wheel window.

S ELEVATION: 6-bay with buttresses dividing bays to aisle and broad pilaster strips to clerestorey. Each aisle bay with bipartite window with sharply pointed hoodmould and flanked by small round lights. Bay to extreme left has only single light window (porch) and has individual

gabled roof flanked by pinnacles. Clerestorey windows in 7-light rose window form. N elevation similarly detailed with tower to extreme W. E gable with 2 bipartites placed high in the gable wall and surmounted by rose window. To lower part of the gable single storey and attic vestry/ church wardens house. This has bipartite windows, gabled as dormers to attic, tall coped stack to E. All with steeply pitched slated roofs.

TOWER: 4-stage tower, buttressed at angles. Plain lower stages, Bipartite louvred openings to 4th stage with intricate tracery. Above this low stage formerly with clockfaces and pinnacles to angles. From this rises the tall octagonal spire with lucarnes to lowest part.

INTERIOR: scheme for decoration by Cottier and Co, important stained glass by Morris and Co. Rich interior with many original features surviving. Narthex with war memorials and remnants of stencilled dado decoration. Church interior galleried to 3 sides, gallery supported

on hefty cast-iron columns (unusually stockily proportioned), rising to lily capitals with impost block which support pointed arch arcading, portrait heads of Church figures in spandrels. Gallery supported between walls and arcade columns on solid cast-iron beams with

elaborately panelled front with "wheel window" motif. Raised dais with dado screen, fine original raised pulpit with stair access and panelled front. Panelled screen behind pulpit, above this organ pipes. Willis organ, with elaborate stencil work to pipes surviving only inside

organ loft. High quality stained glass by Morris and Company to designs by Burne-Jones, Madox Brown and William Morris. Hammerbeam roof rises from corbels at arcade to plain plastered ceiling.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical Building in use as such. Very important interior; an early commission for Cottier and an early instance of Morris stained glass work in Scotland.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17567724

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

• 
  Drawing up a Local Listed Building Consent Order: Historic England Advice Note 6
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Wiltshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Listed Buildings and Other Heritage Assets
• 
  Churches: An Architectural Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)