Bathgate High Church, Jarvey Street, Bathgate, Bathgate, West Lothian

Entry Name: Bathgate High Church, Jarvey Street, Bathgate

Listing Name: Jarvey Street, High Church of Scotland with Graveyard, Boundary Walls, Railings and Gatepiers

Listing Date: 12 February 1996

Category: B

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 357594

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB22129

Building Class: Cultural

Also known as: Bathgate, Jarvey Street, Bathgate High Church

ID on this website: 200357594

Location: Bathgate

County: West Lothian

Town: Bathgate

Electoral Ward: Bathgate

Traditional County: West Lothian

Tagged with: Church building Romanesque Revival architecture

Description

Wardrop and Reid, 1882-1884. Romanesque church with gothic pinnacles and entrance tower. Squared and snecked sandstone with ashlar dressings. Base course, battered buttresses, cill course, impost blocks and plain hoodmoulds; moulded arrises.

ENTRANCE TOWER: 3 stage buttressed tower engaged at W end of SW elevation. Round-arched door with nookshafts and cushion capitals

at head of short flight of steps to SW; window at ground to NW; windows to lower level of 2nd stage with cill course; 3rd stage (bell chamber) slightly recessed, each face with louvred round-arched bipartite, nookshafted window with Roman numeral clock face above; crenellated parapet with crocketed corner pinnacles.

SW ELEVATION: 6-bay with tower to left. 4 bays at centre to nave with 2 bays to outer right (implying transept) under pinnacle-flanked gable with round-arched door between windows and small round-arched window in gablehead.

SE (APSE) ELEVATION: 5 light bowed apse at centre with round-arched lights, nookshafted, flanked by tall single windows.

NE ELEVATION: single storey session house and hall clustered together and adjoined to centre of nave elevation, flanked behind by gabled outer bays with gablehead windows, cross finials and crocketed pinnacles flanking. Deep bowed end elevation to session house/hall,

echoing apse, with round-arched windows, gabled porch to NE with round-arched door, canted projection to NW with piended roof.

Square-lead-paned windows with border glazing, stained glass to apse: secondary protective external glazing. Grey slates.

INTERIOR: tripartite round-arched narthex entrance screen. Rendered interior, brightly painted with U-plan gallery on columns with decorative timber brackets and timber gallery of panelled and arcaded form. Coombed ceiling with hammer braces to compartmentalised soffit

around coved, top lit centrepiece. Rib-vaulted roof to apse with moulded corbels and pointed arches. Original pews. Marble steps to encaustic tile mosaic floor of semi-octagonal apse; cushion-capitalled nookshafts flanking round-arch to apse. Octagonal timber pulpit with

gothic panels and steps. Font of marble, cluster column shaft supporting Gothic panelled basin. Organ with filigreed timber case, in gallery, Bishop.

GRAVEYARD MONUMENTS: dating from circa 1740 and earlier church on site. Many scroll-headed gravestones, later classical stones including obelisks and classical wall monuments, such as that to Rev Walter Jardine, 1811.

BOUNDARY WALLS, GATEPIERS AND RAILINGS: squared sandstone rubble walls with saddleback ashlar coping, mounted by railings with piers dividing at intervals; terrace wall with rounded coping to graveyard. Ashlar gatepiers with panelled upper shafts and pyramidal caps to SW; octagonal gatepiers with dome capped shafts and undulating ornament; 2 pairs of 2-leaf gates. Round-arched ashlar gateway to W.

Statement of Interest

Brownlee reports that the church cost little over ?8,000. The congregation moved from the old church (1737) in 1882 to worship in the neighbouring corn exchange for the duration of the erection of the new church.

External Links

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