St Mary's Roman Catholic Church And Church Hall, High Street, Leslie, Leslie, Fife

Entry Name: St Mary's Roman Catholic Church And Church Hall, High Street, Leslie

Listing Name: High Street, St Mary's RC Church and Church Hall with Boundary Wall, Steps and Piers

Listing Date: 22 December 1994

Category: B

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 382387

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB37328

Building Class: Cultural

Also known as: Leslie, High Street, St Mary's Roman Catholic Church And Church Hall

ID on this website: 200382387

Location: Leslie

County: Fife

Town: Leslie

Electoral Ward: Glenrothes North, Leslie and Markinch

Traditional County: Fife

Tagged with: Church building Church hall

Description

R Thornton Shiells, 1876-9. Simple Gothic church, originally Free Church, with fine tower masking SW corner at ground; 5-bay nave with dividing buttresses, tranpsetal stairtower to E, square section porch to W linking church hall. Squared and snecked whinstone blocks with ashlar dressings and polished ashlar spire, 2-stage saw-tooth coped battered buttresses; chamfered plinth, saw-tooth coped batter at 2nd stage. Plate traceried S window, hoodmoulds with scroll or knot label stops, chamfered reveals and stone mullions. Boarded doors with scrollwork wrought-iron hinges.

S ELEVATION: 2-stage gable end with single pointed lights flanking centre door in heavily moulded door frame with paired colonnettes under abacus caps; hoodmould with scroll labels beneath fleur-de-lys finialled gablet with knot label stops, tympanum with sculpted tree decoration and inscribed ribbon; large triple lancet plate-traceried window in upper stage of gable with colonnettes, centre lancet blinded; entrance approached by straight flight of 7 steps with low saddleback walls: narrow clasping buttress to right breaking eaves as delicate spirelet with ironwork finial, reflecting main spire (see below). Return of gabled single stage stairtower to right with bipartite, pointed window; square section link-porch with trefoil arched doorcase to outer left (beyond tower) adjoining gable end of church hall with dominant tripartite window with paired centre light and single foil, slender polygonal timber louvred lantern with attenuated bellcast roof visible above E pitch.

TOWER: 4-stage tower with clasping buttresses and broach spire. Pointed window at 1st stage over chamfered plinth; 2nd stage S and W faces with saw-tooth coped batter below 2 pointed lights, single coping row and triple lancet with nook-shafts and mullions; 3rd stage, saw-tooth coped batter below tall, timber louvred paired lancets to each face, scalloped louvres to N, with nook-shafts, mullions and corbel table, 4th clock stage above blank course and single coping row, Roman clock face below pointed gablet with fleur-de-lys finial set into moulded frame. Broach spire with fleur-de-lys finialled squinches and lucarnes over clock gablets narrowing to 2 string courses below tall blank course broken by single string course with crockets, all surmounted by ball and delicate wrought-iron shaft finial.

W ELEVATION: 5-bay nave with 2-stage saw-tooth coped dividing buttresses, window to outer left blinded, advanced church hall to outer right with window on return face to N.

N ELEVATION: wide gable end with low piend-roofed square extension at centre, NE corner masked by modern extension, pointed windows in flanking bays, both blinded; blinded plate traceried triple lancet above and shouldered gablehead stack.

E ELEVATION: nave bay divisions as W elevation with low paired window to outer left over flat coped whinstone box (fuel store?), recessed piended extension to outer right with boarded door to left and small window to right: transeptal stairtower to outer left with blocked window at ground and large pointed window above.

All windows 4-pane glazing pattern in metal frames with frosted glass. Purple slates, ashlar coped skews, skewputts and finials, coped ashlar stacks, oval stack to N.

INTERIOR: not seen (1994).

BOUNDARY WALL, STEPS AND PIERS: low saddle-back coped boundary wall of squared and snecked whinstone, with straight flight of 7 steps also with boundary walls, and pyramid-capped ashlar gatepiers.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical building in use as such. Built as a Free Church, this building was also known as 'Logan-Martin' as a result of the combining of two congregations under ministers of these names. The Rev Logan being minister of this building and Rev Martin of the East United Presbyterian Church built 1859 on a site immediately to the W of St Mary's, which burned down in 1921. The congregation of Logan-Martin joined forces with those from Prinlaws and West Church in 1956 to form Trinity Church, West Church being chosen as their place for worship.

External Links

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