Rc Church Of The Immaculate Conception, Arbuthnott Place, Stonehaven

The Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception, located on Arbuthnott Place in Stonehaven, was designed by J Russell Mackenzie and built in 1877. This small, highly decorated Gothic church comprises a 3-bay aisless nave, shallow-gabled transepts, a semicircular apse, a polygonal baptistry, and a 4-stage buttressed tower topped with a belfry and an octagonal pinnacled spire. The exterior is constructed of coursed, squared, and snecked rubble stone with ashlar dressings, featuring deep base and eaves courses. The façade displays traceried circular openings and cusped lancet windows, with 2-stage, sawtooth-coped and pinnacled buttresses and chamfered reveals with raked cills. Decorative ironwork adorns the timber doors.

The principal (northeast) elevation is symmetrical; the central bay features a deeply moulded gabled doorway flanked by bays each containing a triple lancet behind a colonnade, which transitions into a blind trefoil opening, with pinnacled angle buttresses. The gablehead is cross-finialled and incorporates a wheel window within an arched opening of deep, bisected reveal.

The tower, positioned to the southeast, has a lancet window on the first stage, a reduced blank stage, and a circular window on the third stage, leading to a pinnacled arcaded belfry and a polygonal spire with a decorative cast-iron weathervane. The southwest elevation presents paired cusped lancets to the right and left of a nearly full-height apsidal bay, a blank baptistry to the left, and the tower set back in an angle at the right. The northwest elevation features a 3-bay nave, transept with incorporated lancets within a wheel window, and a lower projecting baptistry with three windows and a door; the return side has three windows. The southeast elevation mirrors this layout, with the tower at the outer left.

Coloured glass is within the northeast traceried window, depicting Saint Margarita; leaded diamond pattern glazing is present in the apse and baptistry. Some openings have been reglazed, and a figurative coloured glass lancet depicting 'Come Holy Spirit’ by Edinburgh Stained Glass House, 2003, is in the southeast transept. Grey slates cover the roof, with ashlar-coped skews; cast-iron downpipes have polygonal rainwater hoppers.

The interior is a fine, simple space with a moulded cornice, hammerbeam roof with decorative timber braces, timber pews, and boarded dadoes. The transept includes a double arch springing from a low column with a moulded capital. The apsidal chancel has an elegant braced timber roof supported by stone corbels. The boundary is defined by low coped walls with decorative ironwork, gates, and railings to the northeast; higher rubble walls are elsewhere. A single-story slated rubble cottage, known as the "soup kitchen," is also present.