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Summary

Description

J Russell Mackenzie, 1877. Small, elaborately-detailed gothic church with 3-bay aisless nave, traceried and arcaded front, shallow gabled transepts, semicircular apse, polygonal baptistry and 4-stage buttressed tower with belfry and octagonal pinnacled spire. Coursed, squared and snecked rubble with ashlar dressings. Deep base and eaves courses. Traceried circular openings, cusped lancets. 2-stage, sawtooth-coped and pinnacled buttresses. Voussoirs; chamfered reveals and raked cills. Timber doors with decorative ironwork.

NE (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: symmetrical. Centre bay with deeply moulded gabled doorway with engaged colonettes, flanking bays each with triple lancet behind colonnade giving way to blind trefoil opening and pinnacled angle buttresses; cross-finialled gablehead incorporating wheel window within arched opening of deep bisected reveal.

TOWER: to SE side. Lancet to SE at 1st stage, reduced blank 2nd stage and circular window to SE of further reduced 3rd stage giving way to pinnacled arcaded belfry and polygonal spire with decorative cast-iron weathervane.

SW ELEVATION: paired cusped lancets to right and left of almost full-height apsidal bay at centre, blank baptistry to left and tower set-back in angle at right.

NW ELEVATION: 3-bay nave with dividing buttresses to left, transept to right with 2 cusped lancets incorporated into base of wheel window at centre above, and lower baptistery projecting at outer right with 3 windows and door on return to left.

SE ELEVATION: mirrors the above but with tower at outer left.

Coloured glass to NE traceried window depicting S Margarita; leaded diamond pattern glazing to apse and baptistry; some openings reglazed; figurative coloured glass lancet to SE transept (see Interior). Grey slates. Ashlar-coped skews. Cast-iron downpipes with polygonal rainwater hoppers.

INTERIOR: fine plain interior with moulded cornice, hammerbeam roof and decorative timber braces, timber pews and boarded dadoes; transept with double arch springing from low column with moulded capital. Apsidal chancel with elegant braced timber roof on stone corbels. Lancet to SE transept 'Come Holy Spirit' by Edinburgh Stained Glass House, 2003.

BOUNDARY WALLS, GATES, RAILINGS AND SOUP KITCHEN: low coped boundary walls with decorative ironwork inset railings and gates to NE; high rubble boundaries elsewhere. Single storey, slated, rubble cottage known as 'soup kitchen'.

Statement of Special Interest

Ecclesiastical building in use as such. The Church of the Immaculate Conception is the last remaining place of worship in Stonehaven's Old Town. It boasts details recognised as deriving from Notre-Dame-le-Grand, Poitiers and Chartres and despite the loss of some original glazing is nevertheless an important quiet place on its island site surrounded by roads and behind the High Street. The building date varies from 1875 to 1879 depending upon the source, but it is a certainty that funds for this fine church and the nearby Rickarton Cottages were provided by Mrs Hepburn of Rickarton, as a memorial to her daughter. A sketch in Christie's 'Haven Under The Hill', entitled 'Church of St Mary' shows decorative ridge detail and a ship weathervane, neither of which are evident today (2004). He also mentions an American organ which was installed in April 1880. The priest's house is located at the nearby (separately listed) Rickarton Cottages and is accessible from the church grounds. The nearby soup kitchen was presented to the church by George Blackie in 1905.

References

Bibliography

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