Description

Dated 1879, 2-storey, French gothic detailed former mission hall. Rectangular plan with canted end. Grey stugged, squared and snecked rubble with polished red sandstone ashlar dressings and details, stugged quoins. Cornice above shopfront, string course at ground and 1st floor cill level, stone bracketted cornice at eaves, accented over downpipes. Shouldered windows at 1st floor with chamfered arrises and transoms.

N ELEVATION: gabled, canted centre bay, 2 bipartite windows at ground floor, string course with scrolled label stops above. Pointed arch 3-light plate tracery window at 1st floor, hoodmould over. Roundel in gablehead, trefoil window and hoodmould over, skews with bracketted skewputts and fleur-de-lys finial at apex. Flanking bays, gablets breaking eaves, with pointed arch corbel tables over blind trefoil roundels. Bipartite windows at 1st floor and NE bay ground floor. Later shop window at NW bay. Angles between bays ornamented with nook shafts.

W (STEVENSON STREET) ELEVATION: 5 bays (canted bay described above) ground floor with round-arched doorway in penultimate bay to right with hoodmould, later shop windows with heavy lintels. 1st floor windows, bipartite in bays 2, 3, and 4 from left. Nepus gable breaking eaves at centre, corbelled with date ciphered roundel.

E ELEVATION: 4 bays (canted bay to right, described above) square, 2-storey stone entrance porch to outer right with steps and doorway, bipartite window to E, cornice and blocking course above and piended roof. Bipartite windows to hall, shouldered wallhead stack to right centre. String courses and eaves cornice stopped at porch.

S ELEVATION: cement rendered. Windowless dormer with gable breaking eaves at centre.

Plate glass glazing. Grey slate roof with decorative ridge. Decorative polygonal bellcote detailing removed, plinth remaining.

Single, capped stone pier at foot of external stair with short length of iron railing attached.

Statement of Interest

This was the mission hall to Oban Free High Church, containing the church officer's flat and offices. It was sold by the church in 1978. Dean of Guild plans record alterations by R W Campbell, architect, in 1939. Bellcote shown in photograph of 1980 as an octagonal arcaded timber structure supporting fish-scale slated bell-cast polygonal roof, surmounted by an iron weathervane. Its reinstatement on this strategically sited former hall would be welcome.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q56644714

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.

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