Description

John Henderson, 1857, with later addition circa 1890. Rectangular-plan Gothic style church with tripartite pointed-arched tracery with quatrefoils over to E and W gables. Pointed-arched gabled open entrance porch to NW corner and roofline extending lower to SE to form vestry with tripartite and single trefoil windows and shouldered octagonal stone stack. Later 2-bay memorial chapel addition to NE corner with stepped skew-putt details, hoodmoulds to gable windows and blind shield carved stone detail to apex. Coursed whinstone with drove sandstone quoins and window margins. Graded grey slates and stone skews.

INTERIOR: good simple neo-gothic style interior decorative scheme in place with plain rendered walls, timber pews and boarded timber ceiling. Various later additions enhance the earlier scheme such as the fine stained glass windows. 1883 white marble font and stone pulpit with carved tracery details and engraved 'Go the glory of God and in memory of C L M'. Encaustic c1870 tiled floor to chancel and tiled frieze to reredos depicting last supper and stating 'Glory to God in the highest, on Earth Peace'. Shallow pointed double archway with central paired stone columns leading to later tomb to N. Plain boarded vestry with fireplace. 2 carved crest stones inside the church are from the now demolished Lamington House.

GATEPIERS AND GATES: squared sandstone stone gatepiers with chamfered arises and corniced domed caps reclaimed from a house in Biggar when the gateway was resited off the main road. Cast-iron gates with circle details at low level from the former Moat Park Manse by architect John L. Murray.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical building in use as such. Trinity Chapel is a good example of a small neo-Gothic estate chapel with some fine stone detailing and some good interior details. The Chapel is prominently sited on the road into Lamington Village to which it is related; it was built as the Estate chapel for the former Lamington Estate.

In 1838 Alexander Cochrane MP (1816-1890), grandson of the Earl of Dundonald, inherited the Baillie family estate of Lamington at which time he took on its name to become Alexander Baillie Cochrane. He became Lord Lamington in 1883. Baillie-Cochrane inherited a modest estate and set about rebuilding it from 1844 following his marriage to Anabella Drummond, and began by making large additions to the existing shooting lodge in Elizabethan style to form the, now demolished, Lamington House. At the time Lamington village was a series of bothies stretched along the roadside to the south of the House. He set about building a new village in a programme of improvements to the NE of the house with the earliest building dating to the 1840s and the latest to the 1870s. These buildings survive today and maintain the character of a planned estate village as they were designed.

Lord Lamington commissioned the chapel to be built by architect John Henderson in the 1850s. It was further embellished over the years by gifts of stained glass, the first in the district since the Reformation, the Caen stone pulpit gifted by the Duke of Rutland and the encaustic tile chancel floor gifted by Lady Scarborough, Anabella's sister. An earlier painted reredos was replaced by a tiled freize.

The tomb chapel to the NE was built on the death of the first Lord Lamington in 1890. While the tomb chapel was being built a temporary tomb was built in the churchyard, where his daughter, Countess Vitelleschi now lies. One of his nephews was British Ambassador to Munich and gifted the pair of ornate wrought-iron gates to the chapel. A finely coloured sample of the original decorative painted stencil scheme survives as evidence behind a painting in the chancel.

Drawings in the Biggar Archive sent to Builder Robert Ritchie of Lamington in 1856 show details of stonework. Groome's Gazetteer of 1882 states '70 sittings in a pretty early English edifice'.

The Chapel underwent refurbishment to the exterior and interior stonework in 2009.

List Description updated following resurvey in (2010).

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17853591

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

• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Harrow on the Hill: A photographic portrayal of listed buildings and structures (Historic Buildings Picture Guides)
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Period property manual, victorian house manual 2 books collection set by ian rock
• 
  Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Staffordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)