Gilcomston South Church, Union Street, Aberdeen

Gilcomston South Church, located on Union Street in Aberdeen, was designed by William Smith and opened in 1868 as the second, more elaborate premises of the United Free Church. A hall was added to the rear, facing west and north, around the 1880s. The church features a large asymmetrical composition with free planning, displaying a simple Early English/Decorated style with some Italian influence, particularly in its polychrome detailing. The south elevation, which faces Union Street, is picturesquely massed.

The south elevation includes a square, four-stage tower at the southwest corner, which originally had corner pinnacles that are now lost. The tower rises to a spire with lucarnes above and is supported by stepped angle buttresses. The second stage features a cusped arcade, and there is a void for a clock mechanism at the third stage, which was never installed. The belfry stage has simple arched openings on each face, currently open voids that were originally filled with cusped plate tracery and quatrefoils in the spandrels on slender columns. Below the spire, there is a trefoil corbel table with stylised floriated nailhead moulding at the cornice.

The entrance gable is off-centre and features a large plate-traceried wheel window with colonette spokes, along with a convex-sided triangle adorned with quatrefoils above the gable, although the finial is now lost. At the southeast angle, there is a squat polygonal belfry turret that tapers from a wider base to narrower upper stages, including an open arcaded upper stage and a short spire above. The west and east elevations display a series of gablets to the street, with transverse roofs over the aisles and no clerestory. The windows are lattice style with zinc kames below, and paired lancets above, which have altered glazing, drip moulds, and foliage-carved end stops, along with a band of granite polychromy above the drip moulds, featuring pink and black granite.

The low, single-storey gable of the hall terminates the west elevation facing Summer Street. The church's walls are constructed of granite, while soft sandstone is used for the skews, buttresses, finials, and mouldings, all of which have suffered significant erosion. The roof is slate, equipped with gabled and louvred roof ventilators, and the original cast-iron cresting has been replaced with zinc flashings.