Pathhead Baptist Church And Hall, Anderson Street, Kirkcaldy, Kirkcaldy, Fife

Entry Name: Pathhead Baptist Church And Hall, Anderson Street, Kirkcaldy

Listing Name: Anderson Street, Pathhead Baptist Church with Hall and Boundary Walls

Listing Date: 26 March 1998

Category: C

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 392404

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB45485

Building Class: Cultural

ID on this website: 200392404

Location: Kirkcaldy

County: Fife

Town: Kirkcaldy

Electoral Ward: Kirkcaldy East

Traditional County: Fife

Tagged with: Church building Church hall

Description

David Forbes Smith, 1908 church with circa 1900 hall (former church). Gabled plain gothic church with Free Style details and battered tower (see Notes) and 5-bay aisless nave: rectangular-plan hall. Squared and snecked bull-faced rubble with droved ashlar quoins and dressings. Chamfered ashlar base course on rubble bed, eaves course. Pointed-arch and trefoil-headed openings; hoodmoulds with label-stops; concave moulded reveals and stone mullions.

W (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: 2-stage, gabled bay to centre with steps up to slightly advanced, deeply moulded, gableted doorcase with hoodmould and 2-leaf boarded timber door with decorative cast-iron hinges and multi-pane, leaded fanlight; traceried, 3-light window at 2nd stage. Small, trefoil-headed tripartite window with relieving arch to ground right, slightly advanced tower (see below) to left and flat-coped buttress to outer right.

NW TOWER: single stage tower with small trefoil-headed tripartite window at ground and further similar bipartite window close to parapet; pyramidal-capped, square dies to each angle.

S ELEVATION: 5-bay nave with pointed-arch windows and further small trefoil-headed tripartite window with relieving arch abutting buttress to outer left. Polygonal, louvered air vent with delicate-finialled cap to centre of roof ridge above. Lower hall (see below) adjoining at angle to right of centre with timber door and plate glass fanlight in pointed-arch opening of crenellated porch in re-entrant angle.

N ELEVATION: 5-bay with dividing buttresses, small window to tower at outer right.

Multi-pane leaded glazing with coloured margins. Grey slates and terracotta ridge-tiles. Coped ashlar skews with flat skewputts.

INTERIOR: fixed timber pews with umbrella racks, boarded timber dadoes, panelled timber gallery front with centre clock, and half-timbered gallery walls, hammerbeam roof with large decorative air vents. Finialled, raised centre sounding board to panelled pulpit with canted front with moulded tri-lobed blind arcading and panelling. Baptistry beneath with glazed tiles and marble steps, access from pulpit and rear hall. Vestibule with multi-pane, coloured glazing to part-glazed doors, moulded cornice and marble memorial to 'James Wishart Esq JP, Strathearn House'. Minister's room and Ladies' room retain drip trays and boarded dado area (see Notes).

HALL: gabled hall, former church, adjoining later building at an angle at SE. SW elevation with cross-finialled hoodmould over stepped-tripartite window to and NW elevation with 2 pointed-arch bipartite windows to right and door in linked porch to outer left.

INTERIOR: moulded cornice and collared-timber roof; hoodmould with label-stops to W window, and cast-iron air vents with 'clenched fist' opening mechanism. Baptistry to W (see Notes).

BOUNDARY WALLS: low saddleback-coped rubble boundary walls with inset railings.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical building is use as such. The belfry which Gifford describes as an "Art Nouveau belfry rather of the St Andrews's East (Glasgow) type" was removed in 1992 due to constant water ingress causing much internal damage. The original church (now the hall) was opened in 1900 but soon replaced by the larger and grander 1908 building. The hall baptistry was moved when the raised dais was reoriented to the W. The drip-trays and dadoed-corners retained in both the minister's and ladies' rooms (unfortunately removed from the gentlemen's room) were fitted with draw-screens and used for removal of wet clothes after baptism. James Wishart, together with fellow industrialists were influential in providing funds for the church, not least in an attempt to reform the drinking habits of their factory workers.

External Links

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