Description
James Pearson Alison, 1893-4. T-plan, Early Gothic-style church oriented SE-NW, with slim colonnaded towers flanking entrance gable and attached single-storey, irregular-plan halls. Squared, snecked yellow sandstone with polished ashlar dressings. Stone-mullioned windows, segmental-arched to aisles and hall, trefoil-headed to gallery, and cinquefoil-headed to principal front and transepts; chamfered margins; hoodmoulds to principal windows and door. 2-stage, gabletted buttresses.
CHURCH: 6 stone steps to 2-leaf, timber-boarded door in pointed-arched, recessed, multiple-chamfered architrave at centre of gabled principal (NW/Bourtree Place) elevation, with single flanking lights; 3 tall lancets above; small, tripartite window in gable apex. Full-height, 2-stage, pavilion-roofed, finialled, octagonal towers flanking entrance gable, with open, trefoil-headed colonnades at upper stage; lateral buttresses to outer left and right. Secondary (SW) elevation with tripartite, Y-traceried window to gabled transept at right; 3 bays to left with tripartite windows at ground floor, bipartite windows above, and modern ramp to door breaking into left ground-floor window. Piend-roofed, canted bay to centre of rear (SE) elevation. Gabled transept to left of NE elevation.
INTERIOR: T-plan layout with panel-fronted, sloping galleries over three sides supported on slender cast-iron columns, predominantly with timber casing in the form of 4 shafts. Tapering timber corbels. Exposed timber beams; shallow-vaulted, timber-boarded ceilings. Tongue and groove panelling to dado height. Dark timber pews with chamfered detailing. Panelled rectangular pulpit with plain, balustraded side stair. Large organ in apse, 1925. Plain timber-boarded floors. Timber-mullioned stained-glass screen to narthex with Gothic-patterned ceramic floor tiles; twin stone stairs with decorative cast-iron balustrades and polished timber handrails leading to gallery.
HALLS: single-storey, 3-bay hall adjoining left of NW elevation of church. 7 stone steps to 2-leaf, timber-boarded door in shouldered architrave to right. Tripartite window flanked by bipartite windows. Louvred, gabletted, spirelet vent to ridge of roof. INTERIOR: tongue and groove panelling to dado height; painted, timber-boarded ceiling with painted timber beams and scrolled corbels to main hall; plain corridors to service areas at rear.
Fixed, geometrically patterned, stained glass in leaded lights to church; 2-pane fixed glazing to halls. Grey slate roof with metal ridges. Ashlar-coped skews. Cast-iron rainwater goods.
Statement of Special Interest
A good, late-19th-century, Early Gothic style church situated on a prominent site at the north boundary of the centre of Hawick, designed by James Pearson Alison (1862-1932), Hawick's most prominent architect.
Alison commenced practice in the town in 1888 and remained there until his death, during which period he was responsible for a large number of buildings of widely varying types and styles, including a considerable proportion of Hawick's listed structures. Prior to the construction of the Congregational Church, he had designed halls for Allars Church (Cross Wynd) in 1889. He was also later the architect of St George's West (now Teviot & Roberton) church in 1913, and made extensive additions and alterations to Wilton Parish Church in 1908-10 (see separate listings).
The congregation of this church stems from a group of dissenters with strong temperance leanings who sided with the Congregational Union of Scotland in the last years of the 18th century. They were without a permanent place of worship until 1849 when they built a chapel in O'Connell Street. This soon proved inadequate for their needs, leading to the building of the current church on Bourtree Place at a cost of £3,200. The planning of the halls is well adapted to the tapering site, which is a result of the presence of the former railway to the east.