Old Parish Church, Church Street, Stranraer, Stranraer, Dumfries and Galloway

Entry Name: Old Parish Church, Church Street, Stranraer

Listing Name: Church Street, Old Parish Church (Church of Scotland) Including Lamp Standards

Listing Date: 20 July 1997

Category: B

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 388095

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB41743

Building Class: Cultural

ID on this website: 200388095

Location: Stranraer

County: Dumfries and Galloway

Town: Stranraer

Electoral Ward: Stranraer and the Rhins

Traditional County: Wigtownshire

Tagged with: Church building

Description

1838-41. 3-bay front to rectangular-plan Perpendicular church. Sandstone entrance elevation, whinstone to sides; sandstone dressings. Base course; buttresses dividing bays; flanking octagonal corner buttresses; pinnacles; octagonal shaft at gablehead, pinnacled finial missing; octagonal pinnacles to buttresses flanking central gabled bay. Tooled quoins to rear elevation and S, W and N window openings.

E (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: steps flanked by railings and lamp standards to pointed-arch roll-moulded central entrance; 2-leaf timber door. Cross inset in oval disc; pointed-arch traceried window above, and to flanking bays.

W ELEVATION: 4 centre-arched doorpieces to outer left and right; 2-leaf timber doors. Small brick lean-to at centre ground. Pair of pointed arched lights above. Small arched opening at centre above.

N ELEVATION: 4 arched lights. Brick lean-to and stack at centre.

Grey slate roof; stone skews; narrow coped brick wallhead stack to N elevation.

INTERIOR: flat plaster ceiling; painted ribs and decorative bosses; simple plasterwork to 3 panels. U plan gallery on cast iron columns with bell-capitals and with panelled gallery front; timber dado panelling. Modern timber pulpit by Mackenzie and Partners Ltd, 1957; modern organ by William Hill and Sons and Norman and Beard, 1957; flanking stained glass by Alexander Kerr, 1957-8. Stained glass by John Blyth in N elevation.

LAMP STANDARDS: late Victorian cast-iron lamp standards; foliaged cresting.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical building in use as such. The church stands on a site close to the original, first built in 1649. Built by Hugh McDowall and Andrew McCrea, masons, and James Adair & Co., joiners, one or more of whom, probably provided the design. (James Adair had produced a design in 1834). The church was described in 1875 by W McIlwraith as standing, "... with its gable to the street. It is a plain, substantial edifice, and contains about 1000 sittings." Lamp standards moved to church from the house of the Provost of the Burgh Council in 1978. See separate list description for adjoining graveyard.

External Links

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