[ Former] Darlington Place Church, Main Street, Ayr, Ayr, South Ayrshire

Entry Name: [ Former] Darlington Place Church, Main Street, Ayr

Listing 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

ID on this website: 200357045

Location: Ayr

County: South Ayrshire

Town: Ayr

Electoral Ward: Ayr North

Traditional County: Ayrshire

Tagged with: Church building

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.

External Links

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