Description

P MacGregor Chalmers, 1908-09. Simple Romanesque church with imposing 4-stage square tower to W and domestic Baronial details. Aisled nave with clerestory, chancel and apse. Session house with Baronial stair-turret to SE. Squared and snecked bull-faced sandstone with ashlar dressings. Base course to tower. Round-headed windows, predominantly chamfered openings.

W (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: symmetrical elevation with slightly tapered advanced tower flanked by gable of nave and recessed lower north and south aisles. Round-arched entrance flanked by receding triple cluster of engaged columns with scalloped capitals surmounted by dogtooth ornament and Romanesque carving. Tower stages separated by string courses, some machicolation at eaves course, pyramidal roof. Stages 3 and 4 mirrored on all elevations.

N ELEVATION: off-centre roll-moulded round-arched shallow entrance porch to left of 3-bay low north aisle. Clerestory above. Taller, advanced, gabled 3-bay baptistry chapel to left with tall paired windows.

S ELEVATION: to right 2-bay gable of session house with stair turret to left. To left advanced low 5-bay south aisle with clerestory above. Entrance door in re-entrant angle.

To W 2-leaf 4-panel timber door with small leaded panes to upper panels, leaded fanlight above. 3rd and 4th tower stages have paired roll-moulded windows with raised imposts and central column. W gable ends of N and S aisles have bipartite windows set in ashlar round-arched recesses. Excepting stained glass, windows predominantly glazed with small leaded panes, some with top hoppers. Graded grey slates. Gable end stack to Session House. Seemingly random carved scripture panels and crosses to exterior and interior.

INTERIOR: timber and leaded glass entrance screen to W. 6-bay nave with round-arched arcade, articulated by nook shafts, supported by circular ashlar columns and clerestory with open barrel-vaulted timber ceiling with stone corbels. Cill course to clerestory. All capitals different. Predominantly squared and snecked bull-faced sandstone with ashlar dressings. Chancel apse with blind arcading to ground, stained glass, corbel table and rib-vaulting. Capitals at entrance to apse depict the New Testament. To NE baptistry chapel apse with recently restored contemporary ceiling painting, entered through chevroned arch. Circular stone font. En suite square oak pulpit, communion table, and lectern with blind arcading and Romanesque details. Plain timber pews. Good quality ironwork goods to interior. Various stained glass windows: St George, Christ - Alpha and Omega, and St James in Chancel apse. St Andrew and St Margaret by A C Whalen, circa 1974. Double window in north aisle by G Young, Johnston & Bennet, Glasgow,1948. St Leonard and St Cecilia by Roland Milton, c2000.

GATE PIERS AND BOUNDARY WALLS: gabled stone gate piers to W. Squared and snecked bull-faced stepped sandstone boundary wall to W. To E stepped coursed rubble wall with semicircular coping.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical building in use as such. The organ came from the John Knox Church in the Gorbals in Glasgow and was installed in 1943.

Built to accommodate an expanding congregation, Carriden Parish Church sits next to its ruinous predecessor, the 1766 Carriden Old Church (see separate list description) which was in turn the replacement for a church which once stood at Carriden House (see separate listing). It is an excellent example of simple Romanesque with humanising secular Scottish Baronial touches and is proof of Macgregor Chalmers great skill as a church architect. The sounding board and pieces of the canopy were incorporated into the new church as was the Dutch 1674 Pieter Oostens bell. The foundation stone was laid by the Duke of Hamilton. Suspended from the ceiling is a model of the ship, Ranger, which belonged to the Carriden Sea Box Society.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17810523

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

• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Gwent/Monmouthshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Wales)
• 
  England's Post-War Listed Buildings
• 
  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey