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Summary

Description

1851. Pointed arch church with adjacent and connecting vestry. 2-storey, triple-gable sandstone ashlar frontage with pinnacles, squared and ladder-pinned to sides and rear. Approximately square plan. Battered base course and moulding, cornice above ground floor. Splayed margins, battered cills.

W (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: symmetrical. 3 gables divided by buttresses rising to gablets and pinnacles. Centre gable; 2 circular windows at ground with quatrefoil tracery, 3 stepped windows with hoodmoulds above, small circular quatrefoil window in gablehead, stone cross finial. Outer gables; doorway at ground, hoodmould, 2-leaf doors with decorative wrought-iron hinges. Window with hoodmould above. Angle buttresses with gablets flanking.

S ELEVATION: 3 windows off-set to right.

N ELEVATION: 3 windows off-set to left, vestry adjoining at ground.

E ELEVATION: centre gable advanced; 2 windows with trefoil tracery and circular window above with quatrefoil tracery. Gables of aisles set back, that to left blank with later brick built lean-to at ground. That to right with vestry attached at ground. Single pitch roof, pointed arch window and plain window and door in return.

HALL AND SESSION HOUSE:

W ELEVATION: entrance arch with quatrefoil to right, connecting wing to church set back, pointed arch window, door to left in S face of hall. Session House to left with canted apsidal frontage, pointed arch windows with trefoil heads, that to centre a bipartite with quatrefoil head. Buttress to left.

All windows with intact stained glass and leaded lights. Grey slate pitched roofs, stone skews.

INTERIOR: remarkably fine and intact decorations and furnishing predominantly original and from the 1878 redecoration. Numbered box pews, galler with mouldings, panels and timber compound columns. Timber barrel vaulted ceiling with ribs rising from columns. Grand pulpit with ornate wrought-iron and brass balustrade to ascending stairs. Stained glass from 1878 (See Notes). Organ pipes in gothic case flanking cast windows. Timber panelled coving to hall, session room now used as kitchen.

GATES AND RAILINGS: simple wrought-iron railings in front of vestry, wrought-iron gates with crocketed finial decoration to S side.

Statement of Special Interest

Built as the Anti-Burgher Secession Church it was opened in November 1851. The cost of construction was ?1231/12/6d. It included 3 stained glass memorial windows and a pipe organ. The Manse was at 57 John Street. Two windows each side of the pulpit and a "wheel window" (actually a quatrefoil) above the pulpit were added in 1878. At the same time the interior was re-decorated and a new pulpit painted imitation oak to match the real oak balustrade was added. As a United Presbyterian Church it became St Luke's on 22nd May 1894 and the stained glass illustrates appropriate themes ie. The Lost Sheep, The Lost Coin and The Prodigal Son in the east windows, and The Journey to Emmaus in the west window. Circa 1900 the church combined with the United Free and in 1929 joined the Church of Scotland. In 1954 it was bought back from the Church of Scotland to become a United Free Church, having already unitd with St John's in 1953. Ecclesiastical building in use as such.

References

Bibliography

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