St Matthew's Parish Church, 5 Braid Road, Edinburgh, Morningside, Edinburgh

Description

Hippolyte Jean Blanc, 1889-1890, halls 1896, chancel 1901. Early English Gothic church set on sloping terraces on corner site, cruciform-plan with side aisles, chancel, central flèche, vestry and church halls to SE. Red sandstone, squared and snecked rubble with polished dressings. Base course; pointed arch-openings with chamfered reveals, hoodmoulds and block label stops; offset gablet-capped buttresses, angled at corners; moulded and stepped string course rising to cill course of principal windows; sloping cills; eaves cornice; timber doors with intersecting lancet panelling.

W elevation: framed by buttresses crowned at wallhead by polygonal pinnacles, slightly projecting vestibule at ground floor; moulded deeply chamfered doorway at centre with colonettes, 2-leaf doors with Y-tracery panelling; 2 bipartite windows of slender pointed arches with colonettes flanking; large 4-light window in off-set gablehead above framed by buttresses, with nook-shafts, slender mullions and Y-tracery with trefoils and central mandorla; stepped string course and small shafted window in finialled gablehead.

Aisles: 6-bay; single storey side aisles with lean-to roof and paired narrow trefoil-headed windows. Pinnacled buttress to SW angle of S aisle. Main entrance doorway in shallow stepped surround in westernmost bay of N aisle, broader version of above door. Tripartite clerestorey windows of stepped lancets with blind trefoils in spandrels giving plate tracery effect. Ornate flèche over crossing with slated base, ornate timber carving and leaded spire with weathervane.

N and S transepts: gabled end elevations each with 2 large 3-light windows with cinquefoil tracery divided by central buttress, string course and louvred trefoil in gablehead. Return elevations blank except 2 string courses and shouldered wallhead stack of paired drum stacks to E return of N transept.

Chancel and vestry: rectangular gabled chancel with large 4-light window with cinque- and quatrefoil tracery, string course and small stepped tripartite in gablehead. Bipartite plate traceried window with pierced quatrefoil in spandrel on N return. Octagonal vestry with finialled pyramidal roof in re-entrant angle formed with N transept, narrow trefoil-headed windows under stepped string course and doorway in linking passage to N.

Church hall: single storey hall adjoining S side of chancel with gabled elevation to N, plate traceried lancet window to gabled elevation, chamfered doorway to right, secondary shouldered-arch doorway to rear W elevation. Ridge ventilators and roof lights.

Square-pane leaded glazing (ornamental pattern to heads of clerestory windows). Green slate roof with red crested ridge tiles, saw-tooth skews with gablet-capped skewputts, W gable with gablet coping. Moulded eaves gutters and gutterheads.

Interior: arcaded nave with quatrefoil-section piers with shaft-rings and octagonal bases, diapered spandrels; nook-shafts dividing chancel bays; raked timber gallery over tiled W vestibule with arcaded parapet over arcaded screen, cusped openings with ornamental stained glass; boarded wagon roof with crossbeams rising from short corbel shafts; 2 arches opening into transepts; moulded chancel with colonettes; arcaded chancel with painted boarded wagon roof, trefoil-arched door to vestry in N wall, marble floor and organ in S wall (Henry Willis & Sons, 1901); tiled and panelled vestry;

Furnishings: carved timber choirstalls, dado and altar in chancel (Scott Morton & Co.); polygonal carved stone pulpit with marble inlay and colonettes; carved stone font en suite (W H Kerr); ornate wrought-iron hanging gasoliers to nave (H J Blanc).

Stained glass: E window (4 evangelists, scenes from life of Christ) by E Burne-Jones, made by Morris & Co., 1900; W window (Christ as friend, teacher, philanthropist, missionary) by Percy Bacon & Co., 1905; 2 lights in S aisle (St Columba, St Ninian) by William Wilson, 1905; S transept (memorials to WW I).

Church hall with cast-iron columns and timber roof on stone corbels with large roof lights.

Boundary wall, gatepiers, lamp posts and railings: low rubble wall with cast-iron railings, gatepiers with domed coping, 2 flights of steps leading up terraces with squat piers to alternate treads, 4 ornamental wrought- and cast-iron lamp posts with spherical lamps.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical building in use as such. A NW tower and spire was projected but never built. Prior to the building of the church (formerly called St Matthew's and renamed after merger with South Morningside Free Church, now Cluny Church Centre, Cluny Drive), the congregation used an iron church in Cluny Avenue (by Isaac Dixon, Liverpool). The of the interior is similar to St Luke's, West Queen Street, Broughty Ferry, Dundee (H J Blanc, 1883-4) and Govan Old

Parish Church, Glasgow (R R Anderson, 1884-8), two important churches planned according to ecclesiological rules. Blanc was one of Scotland's leading ecclesiological architects.

External Links

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