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Summary

Description

Charles S S Johnston, 1881. Gothic church with square-plan 3-stage entrance tower to NW (see Notes), decorative tiered, spired ventilator and lucarnes to roof. Squared and snecked bull-faced sandstone with polished dressings. Battered cill course and string courses. Pointed arches to major openings with hoodmoulds and carved ball-stops.

W (EASTER ROAD) ELEVATION: star-finialled gable-end of nave to centre with 4 lancet windows at ground, 3-light window above, with simple tracery to centre light; louvred arrowslit in gablehead. Slightly advanced tower flanking to left: 2-leaf timber panelled door in moulded gothic doorpiece with roundel in tympaneum, flanked by pilaster buttresses surmounted by obelisks; arrowslit in upper stage and blocking course at wallhead. Bay to outer right with secondary door, 4-centred arch with 2-leaf timber panelled door, divided from centre bay by truncated buttress with polygonal top.

N AND S ELEVATIONS: mirrored 6-bay elevations, each as follows. Bay to outer W with pair of pointed arch lancets at ground, and 3-light shoulder-arched window above. Remaining bays with full-height paired lancets. 4 decorative gabled timber lucarnes above deeply swept eaves with shingles to sides, 3-light cusped windows and cusped bargeboards, terracotta finials. Rooflights to intervening roofspan.

VENTILATOR: large circular ventilator on ridge of nave. Battered lead apron to lower and middle stages encircles with tiered timber columns, cusped at head to middle stage and breaking eaves in decorative finials, swept conical slated roof with lead finial.

Polygonal (honeycomb) leaded glazing with protecting perspex sheets to exterior. Grey slate roofs with decorative terracotta ridge tiles. Rounded stone stack with battered coping to SE corner.

INTERIOR: timber traceried arcades supported on cast-iron columns to nave. Timber gallery to W end.

BOUNDARY WALL: dwarf stone wall with later railings to front Gabled gateways to N and S sides leading to rear.

CHURCH HALL: to rear. Rebuilt 1891. Swept slate roof with skylights and gabled central ventilator.

Statement of Special Interest

Ecclesiastical building no longer in use as such. Thomas Guthrie was a founder of the Free Church and an active social reformer, working to set up non-sectarian schools, improve housing and living conditions and promote temperance. Charles S.S. Johnston was chosen as the architect for the Guthrie Memorial Church after a limited competition to which four architects were invited to enter. The original estimate of the building was ?3,500, but from the premature termination of the tower one infers that the estimate was too low. However, the truncated form of the tower is only marginally damaging to the resulting composition and the distinct Germanic or Scandanavian references of the timberwork to the dormers and ventilator give the former Guthrie Memorial Church a special place among Edinburgh churches.

The church is sited opposite the end of Brunswick Road, to which it provides effective termination. It sits next to St Margarets Episcopal Church of two years earlier by Hippolyte Blanc, and the two provide relief and variety in Easter Road. It is currently (2002) for sale, with Listed Building Consent to be converted to 8 flats.

References

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