Description

Maclaren and Aitken, 1874. Little altered, well-detailed single storey, T-plan, gabled former school with classical detailing, adjacent to former St Aidan's Church (now Broughty Ferry New Kirk) prominently sited at crossroads of Brook Street and St Vincent Street. Rectangular-plan doorpieces incorporating semicircular-arched keystoned doors, blind frieze, cornice and pierced balustrade; broad gables with segmental windowheads and louvered occuli framed by elongated consoles; finialled and pedimented dormerheads breaking eaves; segmental- and square-headed windows. Roughly squared snecked rubble with contrasting blond sandstone stugged dressings framing openings and droved quoin strips. Broad base and cill courses. Stone transoms and mullions, raked cills and stop-chamfered arrises.

FURTHER DESCRIPTION: symmetrical principal elevation to W with projecting centre gable incorporating 4-light transomed window rising into segmental pediment, oculus and Dutch-style gablehead, and single flanking windows; each return with bipartite and single windows below triangular-pedimented dormerheads. Set-back bays to left with single window at broad outer left gable, centre bays with balustraded doorpiece flanked by small horizontal tripartite to left and bipartite window to right, and broad doorway in re-entrant angle. Bays to right of centre mirror the above with additional small segmental dormer window over tripartite and retaining 2-leaf panelled timber door.

Largely 8-pane glazing pattern in timber sash and case windows, some boarded externally. Graded grey slates; stepped roofline. Cavetto coped shouldered ashlar gablehead stacks. Ashlar-coped skews with moulded skewputts.

INTERIOR: some panelled doors, boarded timber dadoes and moulded cornicing retained. Large centre room with hammerbeam type roof and flanking rooms with narrow cast iron supporting columns.

Statement of Interest

St Aidan's Church Hall was built as the East School and is a well designed and somewhat unusual early Board School, particularly distinguished by its classical detailing and sympathetic form set against the soaring spire of St Aidan's Church and following the line of the graveyard boundary wall. 3 Board Schools were built during the 1870s in Broughty Ferry of which 1 has been demolished and 1 converted to a doctor's surgery. The former East School is a good example of the work of the locally-based and short-lived partnership James Maclaren and G S Aitken and it forms an important part of the streetscape in this part of Broughty Ferry. Maclaren and Aitken worked in partnership from 1873 until 1877, and designed a number of high profile buildings in both Broughty Ferry and Dundee. Their commissions include the 1876 Queen Street Church in Broughty Ferry, as well as Friarfield House (1873), The Keyhole (1874), and Calcutta Buildings (1877), all in Dundee.

The original layout of the school building would presumably have constituted a central assembly hall flanked by boys and girls classrooms, or possibly infants and juniors. The building was taken over by St Aidan's Church in 1913, when 'the shadow of the Great War was now over the country and the War Department billeted soldiers in the Halls that had been taken over by the Church' Campbell, p3. Again used by soldiers in WWII, the building remained largely in its original form until the 1990s when interior divisions were erected, and a new entrance was installed at the rear. St Aidan's Church was erected in 1824, it opened as place of worship on 7 May 1826 and was constituted a Chapel of Ease by the General Assembly of Church of Scotland in May 1827. Subsequently becoming Brought Ferry Parish Church, St Aidan's and the nearby East Church joined to form Broughty Ferry New Kirk during the opening years of the 21st century.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q77780222

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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