Viewforth Church, Gilmore Place, Edinburgh, Morningside, Edinburgh

Entry Name: Viewforth Church, Gilmore Place, Edinburgh

Listing Name: Gilmore Place Viewforth Church with Boundary Walls Gatepiers and Railings

Listing Date: 3 February 1993

Category: B

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 364088

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB27104

Building Class: Cultural

Also known as: Edinburgh, Gilmore Place, Viewforth Church

ID on this website: 200364088

Location: Edinburgh

County: Edinburgh

Town: Edinburgh

Electoral Ward: Morningside

Traditional County: Midlothian

Tagged with: Church building

Description

Pilkington & Bell, 1871-2, tower 1879. Square-plan gothic church with NE tower, hall and offices to NW, basement with schoolroom and vestry to NE; cream sandstone, squared and snecked stugged rubble with stugged ashlar dressings; steeply chamfered cill course; colinnettes with stiff-leaf capitals; doors with distinctive lattice panelling.

ENTRANCE TOWER: 3-stage (bellfry removed 1976); angle buttresses; battered base; moulded eaves course; gabled entrance to SE with refoil doorway in moulded pointed-arch flanked by colonnettes, hoodmould with carved masque stops; 3 attenuated slit lancets above to SE and NE; top of tower with thin proud ashlar strips forming 6 narrow arches with oculi (now boarded up) in centre to each face; buttress-like projection with 2 lancets in centre of NE face.

SE (GILMORE PLACE) ELEVATION: 2-bay (excluding tower to outer right); gabled bay to right with ornate stone finial; row of 5 small basket-arched windows divided by squat columns with moulded capitals at ground floor; large 4-light pointed-arch window with thin colonnettes and geometrical tracery. Slightly advanced gabled bay to left with paired doorways of stilted pointed arches with colonettes; 2 lancets with cusped heads above; rose window with tracey in gablehead; clasping buttresses with battered caps. Facade of offices adjoining to left, 2-storey, 3-bay; pointed-arch central door with colonnettes supporting gabled and finialled ashlar canopy, tripartite windows with chamfered reveals to outer bays, 2 single windows above breaking eaves flanked by quatrefoil oculi, parapet of cast-iron brattishing, single storey church hall behind offices. NE (VIEWFORTH) ELEVATION: 3 gabled bays (excluding tower to outer left); basement to left with 4 windows and door to right of centre; at ground floor level continuous row of 10 small basket-arched windows divided by squat columns with moulded capitals; 2 lancets with quatrefoil heads above under gables of outer bays; bay to centre with large 4-light pointed-arch window with geometrical tracery and stepped hoodmould; 'green man' carvings at meeting of gable copings. SW ELEVATION: 4-bay; single storey church hall and offices at ground floor; 2 trefolied lancets in outer right bay; 3 gabled bays to left with continuous row of small rectangular windows with chamfered reveals above church hall, 2 lancets with quatrefoils above under gables of outer bays; bay to centre with large 4-light pointed-arch window with geometrical tracey.

NW ELEVATION: rose window with tracery in gablehead. Small, diamond-shaped leaded panes with stained glass borders, windows to basement and offices timber sash and case windows with plate glass glazing; slate roof, lead flashings; coped skews.

INTERIOR: plastered T-plan interior with groin-vault above; raked timber U-plan gallery with carved, panelled balustrade; slender cast-iron columns with elaborate Corinthian capitals and four-way consoles supporting transverse beams with ornate foliate cornice over side galleries; tie-rods between capitals; modern screens under gallery cutting diagonally across SW corners and to NE across short leg of T; ornamental cast-iron round ventilation grilles in ceiling; tiled vestibules and open stair towers to gallery and tower with ornamental cast-iron railings in re-entrant angles of T-plan; curved timber pews with cast-iron umbrella stands. FURNISHINGS: elaborately carved large Gothic/Tudorbethan timber pulpit and organ case with blind tracery and pinnacles by TP Marwick, 1899; 2 carved stone fonts, 1 of alabaster, 1 of stone with angel heads; series of Boyle's air inlet Brackets No 6 (as adverties eg in Academy Architecture 1897, now painted over) on side walls. BOUNDARY WALL, GATEPIERS AND RAILINGS: low rubble wall with saddleback coping, sturdy gatepiers with ornate heads and carved foliage in trefoils, ornamental cast-iron railings and 3 sets of gates.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical building in use as such (Church of Scotland).

External Links

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