Main Street and North Harbour Street, Former Darlington Place Church Including Hall, Gatepiers, Gates, Railings and Boundary Wall, Ayr, South Ayrshire

Entry Name: Main Street and North Harbour Street, Former Darlington Place Church Including Hall, Gatepiers, Gates, Railings and Boundary Wall

Listing Date: 15 March 1988

Category: B

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 357045

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB21658

Building Class: Cultural

Location: Ayr

County: South Ayrshire

Town: Ayr

Electoral Ward: Ayr North

Traditional County: Ayrshire

Description

Clarke and Bell, 1860, additions John Arthur 1897. 3-bay, gabled, rectangular-plan church with turreted SE angle tower and hall to rear. Coursed, squared sandstone. Lancet windows.

SE (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: central advanced gabled entrance porch; shafted and moulded recess to central bay; trumeau divides 2 single timber doors; decorative cusped work above; 1860 to gablehead; flanking lancet panels. 5-light stepped lancet window above; Y-tracery, cuspwork and quatre-foils; small opening to gablehead; cross finial; splayed bases to clasped corner buttresses; truncated pinnacles. Recessed gallery stair window to right; Y-tracery, cuspwork and quatre-foils; cross finial at apex; buttress and truncated pinnacle to outer right. Corbelled angled turret stair tower to outer left; lancet and quatre-foil openings; finial to apex.

SW (NORTH HARBOUR STREET) ELEVATION: 8-bay, grouped 2-5-1. 3-light window to advanced gabled hall to outer left; cusped, architraved infilled trefoil opening to gable; timber door to basement below; single timber door to trefoil-headed entrance to right. Cusped bipartite windows at ground to central 3 bays of 5-bay section; Y-tracery and cusping to gallery windows aligned above, breaking roofline to form gablets; hood-moulded squat tripartite windows at ground to outer bays; tall traceried gallery windows aligned above; small oval openings to gableheads; truncated pinnacles flanking; finials to gableheads (rising from buttress to outer right). Tower to outer right (see above).

Leaded windows. Grey slate roof (banded fish-scale work to tower); stone skews.

INTERIOR: converted to theatre, 1986. Curved, gilded staircases to entrance porch; leaded glazed timber doors. Coved ceiling; roll-moulded arcading; decorative gilded column capitals. Library fittings from Nitshill Lending Library.

GATEPIERS, GATES, RAILINGS AND BOUNDARY WALL: square-plan gatepiers to entrance; 2-leaf iron gate to SE elevation, single iron gate to SW elevation; railings surmount low coped boundary wall enclosing site.

Statement of Interest

No longer in ecclesiastical use (United Presbyterian), now the Borderline Theatre. Occupies a prominent siting at the N section of the New Bridge (see separate list description). Architects also designed Ayr Academy in Fort Street (see separate list description). Hall formerly used as classroom and session house.