Old Parish Church, Crombie Street, Oban, Oban, Argyll and Bute

Entry Name: Old Parish Church, Crombie Street, Oban

Listing Name: Combie Street, Oban Old Parish Church with Wall, Gates and Piers (Church of Scotland)

Listing Date: 28 August 1980

Category: C

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 384287

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB38817

Building Class: Cultural

ID on this website: 200384287

Location: Oban

County: Argyll and Bute

Town: Oban

Electoral Ward: Oban South and the Isles

Traditional County: Argyllshire

Tagged with: Church building

Description

Alexander Shairp, 1893, Romanesque church. Rectangular plan with projecting tower and spire at N end, entrance porches to either side, circular windows in N gable behind. Bull-faced, squared and snecked grey granite walls with yellow ashlar spire, dressings and details.

TOWER: 3-stage with octagonal ashlar spire dentilled at base, topped with weathervane. Lower stage, slit windows with datestone and string course below 2-light round-arched lancet in round-arched panel. Flanking porches, round-arched doorways, timber, 2-leaf doors with ornate iron hinges. Shafts at corners with pyramidal pinnacles, dentilled at base. Middle stage, single round arched lancet on N, W and E faces. Upper stage on battered, saw-tooth coped course, each face with 2-light louvered windows, circular decoration above. Stone stair to gallery within tower.

NAVE: 6-bay hall, round-arched lancets, with dividing saw-tooth coped buttresses. 3-light round-arched lancet in south gable wall, with 3-flue stack at apex. Shafts at N corners with pyramidal pinnacles, dentilled at base. Session room and offices to S gable, double gable with M-roof behind.

INTERIOR: galleried, pitch pine pews with umbrella stands. Panelled gallery across N end of hall, supported on cast-iron columns, with shell motif capitals. Vertical timber wainscoting. Organ by Ingram & Co. of Edinburgh. Octagonal pulpit with blind arcading centred in south wall with matching pitch pine doors to either side, leading to session room and office. Marble font circa 1908. Ceiling coved along E and W walls behind curved timber struts on decorative stone corbels, iron ventilation grilles. Centre window of W wall stained glass, depicting life of Christ, S window, 3 stained glass windows set in round headed arch, hood mould over with floral corbels. Nave and tower windows square leaded lights with coloured glass. Office and session room windows sash and case with leaded glazing. Grey slated roof with terracotta ridges and skew copes to hall and offices. Ventilator plinths at main roof ridge.

GRAVEYARD WALLS, GATES AND PIERS: Graveyard walls of rubble, concrete cope, lowered on west side of church with modern railing on top. Wrought-iron gates with plain, capped piers of black granite. Graveyard contains a variety of headstones including 2 pink granite celtic crosses (late 19th century) and a low cast-iron grave marker with vine leaf decoration 1861. Pink granite obelisk of 1909.

Statement of Interest

Replacement for "Chapel of Ease" (1822) and built on the same site, hence earlier gravestones. Existing boundary walls, iron gates and gate-piers appear in a photograph of the old building, suggesting they are contemporary with it. Dean of Guild Court plans record an application by Alexander Shairp in 1893 for Oban Parish Church, Combie Street, for the Trustees of Oban Parish Church.

External Links

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