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Summary

Description

T G Abercrombie, 1893. 2-storey, roughly 3-bay, former Mission Hall comprising Tudor-style front building with gabled dormerheads, mullioned bipartite windows and Arts and Crafts style porch, and rendered brick gabled hall to rear forming L-plan. Tooled, squared, snecked sandstone with polished sandstone ashlar dressings. Band course inscribed ABBEY MISSION HALL; 1st floor cill cornice; bracketed eaves outshot between dormerheads; splayed, moulded window jambs to ground; splayed unmoulded window jambs to 1st floor; shallow relieving arches over 1st floor windows; raised square panels to dormerhead apices, the central one dated 1893; moulded ashlar skews with ball finials to dormer gables.

FURTHER DETAILS: 7 bays to ground floor of front building with doorways in 2nd and 5th bays from left: principal entrance in 5th bay with 2-leaf timber panelled door in moulded round-arch architrave; substantial piend-roofed porch supported on scrolled brackets at wall and polished brown granite columns resting on boundary wall. 2-leaf timber panelled door to 2nd bay from left in roll-moulded, corniced architrave. 3 dormer-headed windows to upper floor. Fairly regular fenestration to rear elevation of front building. 5-bay hall with segmental-arched windows to S elevation only; 2 pointed iron ridge vents.

Variety of glazing patterns including leaded lights, timber sash and case windows with small-pane glazing in upper sashes; timber-framed windows to rear hall. Graded grey Scottish slate; red ridge tiles to roof of hall.

INTERIOR: timber stair to upper floor of front building with decorative turned balusters and sturdy newels with dentiled cornices; fairly plain hall to 1st floor with timber-boarded panelling to dado. Main hall has trussed ceiling and timber-boarded panelling to dado. Timber-panelled interior doors.

BOUNDARY WALL: early 20th century. Saddle-coped snecked sandstone boundary wall in front of main building, rising at entrances to form gatepiers.

Statement of Special Interest

A neat and well-designed building by a prominent local architect, that makes a considerable and positive impact on the streetscape.

The hall was built on the former site of an infant school, which is shown on the 1st edition OS map (circa 1858). An earlier set of Dean of Guild plans, dated 1892, indicate that the original intention was to merely alter the existing school. It was evidently then decided to build a completely new building: unfortunately the drawings for this no longer exist, the only record of them being in the Dean of Guild Register. The porch and boundary wall may possibly be a later addition as they are not shown on the 2nd edition OS map, but do appear on the 3rd edition map.

Thomas Graham Abercrombie (1862-1926) established what was to become Paisley's most prolific and long-lived architectural practice in 1886: about 170 works are currently known to have been carried out by his firm during his life time. His work covered a wide variety of styles and building types including a number of schools and churches and many domestic buildings: his largest commission was the Royal Alexandria Infirmary

The Mission Hall still belongs to Paisley Abbey and is used by them as their Church Hall.

References

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