Pitlochry West Church, Church Road, Pitlochry, Pitlochry, Perth and Kinross

Entry Name: Pitlochry West Church, Church Road, Pitlochry

Listing Name: Church Road, Pitlochry Parish Church, Including Celtic Cross Memorial

Listing Date: 9 June 1981

Category: A

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 385716

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB39850

Building Class: Cultural

Also known as: Pitlochry, Church Road, Pitlochry West Church

ID on this website: 200385716

Location: Pitlochry

County: Perth and Kinross

Town: Pitlochry

Electoral Ward: Highland

Traditional County: Perthshire

Tagged with: Church building

Description

1884, Charles & Leslie Ower, Dundee; extended 1996. Curious version of Romanesque, cruciform-plan, aisless church with squat tower on raised site. Roughly squared and snecked rubble with ashlar dressings. Base course and mutuled eaves cornice. Round-headed openings; rose windows; continuous hoodmould; corbels; 2-stage sawtooth-coped buttresses; stone mullions and chamfered reveals.

SE (BONNETHILL ROAD) ELEVATION: advanced canted bay to centre with dominant gabled transept, low conical-roofed semicircular bay at ground with continuous row of narrow lights close to cornice with nailhead mutules; recessed face with diagonal buttresses and rose window with flanking squat cushion-capitalled columns, dogtooth-moulded windowhead giving way to contrasting voussoirs, hoodmould with label stops and mandorla in gablehead with cross finial. Canted bay to right with hoodmoulded door and decoratively-astragalled semicircular fanlight in small pitch-roofed finialled porch, that to left with single window and outer buttress. Tower (see below) to outer left, and bipartite window with centre and flanking colonnades in bay to right with buttress and recessed face of extension beyond.

SW TOWER: 3-stage, square-plan tower with broad, full-height, angle pilasters and pyramidal roof, engaged to NE. 1st stage NW with stone-cross-finialled pedimented doorcase, cushion-capitalled flanking columns and carved tympanum to left and small arcaded tripartite opening (blocked) to right; single window to SW with flanking colonnades, carved windowhead and hoodmould with label stops, narrow lights to outer pilasters; basement door to SE. Each face of 2nd stage with corbel course and corniced band giving way to arcaded bipartite window with colonnettes, tiny roundel on tympanum and dogtooth-moulded windowhead all surmounted by arcaded corbel table. Each face of 3rd stage with clock face in deeply moulded roundel with stepped cornice breaking band course and abutting mutuled cavetto cornice above; water spouts projecting at S and W angles. Slightly setback finialled pyramidal roof with narrow battered stack to NW, attenuated louvered lucarne with decorative timberwork on tympanum to each remaining face, and small polygonal, crocketted tower piercing cornice at S angle.

NW ELEVATION: mirrors that to SE.

NE (CHURCH ROAD) ELEVATION: low piend-roofed extension with window to centre and paired small flanking lights projecting from slightly higher original face (also piended) retaining original centre doorway with bipartite round-headed fanlight and flanking windows (all behind extension).

Mainly geometric coloured leaded glazing, with clear glass to rose windows. Grey slates, fishscale pattern to tower. Coped ashlar stack and stepped ashlar-coped skews with gablet skewputts. Cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers, and decorative cast-iron cross finials.

INTERIOR: polygonal interior with semi-vaulted ceiling supported on later columns (see Notes), with fixed timber pews, boarded timber dadoes, plain and decorative plasterwork. Moulded chancel arch with plain sounding board flanked by organ pipes, simple panelled pulpit and elders pews. Carved polygonal font on open base.

CELTIC CROSS MEMORIAL: 3-stage granite memorial to Dr Alexander Duff, Church of Scotland's 1st Missionary to India. Plain base supporting battered pedestal with inscription giving way to reduced stage with vertical consoles flanking bronze head of Alexander Duff and giving way to finely carved Celtic Cross.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical building in use as such. Shows clear reference to the imaginative planning and style of F T Pilkington's churches. Previously listed as 'Pitlochry West Church of Scotland, Moulin Road (Mount Zion Church)'. Erected as chapel-of-ease of Moulin Parish on a site donated by Archibald Butter, and built with stone from the nearby Aldour Quarry. The foundation stone was laid on 4th September, 1883. The organ was a gift of Andrew Carnegie, and the clock and bell erected on 6th March, 1885 in memory of Archibald Butter. Raised to the status of second Parish Church in 1923 (Moulin being the first) this building was, by 1991, the only Parish Church in Pitlochry. The supporting columns are thought to have been added circa 1950. The Alexander Duff Memorial was erected 1889

External Links

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