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Summary

Description

Robert Morham. Dated 1871. Unusual, freestyle, double-gabled church with diminutive 4-stage square-plan belfry tower. Coursed, rock-face ashlar with stugged dressings. Narrow entrance bay to left with recessed timber door with pointed gablehead with lettering 'BLACKFRIARS STREET 1871'. Small windows at upper storeys rising to 2-stage belfry with nook shafts to angles and louvred openings. Pair of tall and narrow identical gabled bays to right, each with pointed-arch double-leaf timber doors with moulded architraves. Tall, bipartite lancet windows above with small rose window to centre. Paired gable configuration mirrored at rear elevation with further, smaller bay to right.

Steeply pitched roof with continous glazed rooflights to ridge. Predominently multi-pane glazing to timber astragalled fixed-pane windows. Broad end stack to S gable. Clay cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods.

Statement of Special Interest

The former United Presbyterian Church at Nos 17-21 Blackfriars Street is an unusual composition. The church responds sympathetically to it tall narrow site, integrating with its neighbours and maintaining uniformity throughout the planned run to the East side of Blackfriars Street. The diminutive tower is particularly unusual and despite the challenges of the site, the architects involved have achieved a balanced and carefully proportioned building. It was built by Robert Morham, the former principal assistant to David Cousin, probably following a design by Cousin and Lessels.

Under the 1867 Improvement Act, David Cousin and Robert Lessels, two of the most accomplished architects of their generation, outlined plans for Blackfriars Street, St Mary Street, Jeffrey Street and Chambers Street. The architectural style employed 'reflects a transition from pure Italian Renaissance to a mid Victorian freestyle also evident in their later bank-houses' (Dictionary of Scottish Architects).

Formerly known as Blackfriars Wynd, the E side was demolished in 1867 under the Improvement Act, the roadway widened and subsequently renamed Blackfriars Street as part of the first wave of sanitary improvements within the Old Town. Throughout the 19th Century the Old Town's prosperity declined as large sections of the nobility and middle classes moved out of the area in favour of the grandeur and improved facilities of Edinburgh's New Town. The Improvement Act of 1867 made efforts to address this, responding early on with large-scale slum clearance and redevelopment of entire street frontages. The former United Presbyterian Church is currently not in use (2007).

Part of B-Group comprising 1-67 (Odd Nos) Blackfriars Street (see separate listings). Category changed from C(S) to B (1992). List description revised as part of Edinburgh Holyrood Ward Resurvey (2007/08).

References

Bibliography

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