St James The Great Episcopal Church, Arbuthnott Street, Stonehaven

St James The Great Episcopal Church, Arbuthnott Street, Stonehaven

This is a Grade A Episcopal church of transitional architectural character, built in phases over three decades. Sir Robert Rowand Anderson designed the nave, completed between 1875 and 1877. Anderson, working with Arthur Clyne, then added the chancel, organ chamber and vestry between 1883 and 1885, with John Morgan as builder. Arthur Clyne later designed the narthex and baptistery in 1906, the baptistery incorporating stained glass windows by Sir Ninian Comper dating from 1929.

The church comprises a five-bay nave with low buttressed side aisles and clerestorey, a crowstepped lean-to narthex, and a semi-octagonal baptistery with a prismatic roof. A slim tower with a circular belfry stage projects from the south-west, adjacent to a semi-octagonal organ chamber to the north-east and a choir vestry and sacristy to the south-east. The chancel terminates in an apsidal form.

The building is constructed of squared and snecked rubble with some Aberdeen bond, dressed with ashlar. A deep base course is emphasised by continuous hoodmoulds that form string courses, eaves course, and blocking courses to the baptistery and vestry. Openings are principally round-arched, with quatrefoil and trefoil-headed lights to the vestry, pointed-arch openings to the north-west aisle, and a vessica window to the north-west gablehead of the nave. Squat two-stage coped buttresses with voussoirs and hoodmoulds with label stops flank the elevations. Raked cills and chamfered reveals are throughout. Doors are two-leaf vertically-boarded timber with decorative ironwork hinges.

The north-west principal elevation presents a tall gabled frontage with a projecting full-width narthex. Each return of the narthex incorporates a moulded doorpiece beneath a crowstepped half-gable with finials. A polygonal-roofed baptistery projects from the centre. The second stage rises with a raised centre featuring a five-part arcaded frame incorporating engaged colonettes with abacus capitals, a broad centre light and flanking blind arcades. The gablehead is cross-finialled and incorporates a glazed vessica window.

The south-east elevation rises as a tall two-stage apse. The first stage is blank; the second stage contains six regularly-disposed lancets under a continuous hoodmould. The north-east (Arbuttnott Street) elevation shows the single lights of the five-bay aisled nave on the right, with a taller light on the right return. A slightly lower apsidal chancel occupies the outer left, with a small gabled projection housing the organ. The south-west elevation mirrors this arrangement but features a low vestry projecting at the right with two small lights on a gabled return, and a further projecting polygonal-roofed choir and tower at the junction of nave and apse.

The tower comprises two upper stages of a finialled conical-roofed bell tower. A square stage with tiny openings gives way to a reduced belfry with narrow stone-louvered openings under a continuous hoodmould, cornice and stone-slated roof.

Windows throughout feature diamond- and square-pattern multi-pane glazing with clear and coloured margins and stained glass. The roof is covered in grey slates with decorative terracotta ridge tiles and ashlar-coped skews. Square-section cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers and fixings drain the building.

The interior contains a fine arcaded Romanesque space with round columns and uncut capitals in the nave. Clerestorey windows light the nave, which is roofed with a hammebeam structure. A tall chancel arch leads to a chancel and apse with ribbed timber-lined barrel-vaulted roof. Fixed timber pews occupy the nave.

The narthex contains a two-leaf screen door in a pointed-arch opening with decoratively-astragalled leaded panels and fanlight. The apse features a high altar with an elaborately sculptured reredos by Gambier Perry of London, a memorial to Mrs Annette Maria Baird of Ury (1884). The reredos comprises four crocketted and finialled pointed-arch niches with trefoil heads containing marble figures of Saints Andrew, Peter, James and John. A larger central niche holds a seated figure of Christ carved in high relief.

The organ was built by Wadsworth of Manchester. Carved choir stalls date from 1927. A decoratively carved Caen stone pulpit was designed by Arthur Clyne and incorporates quatrefoil panels with carved heads. A marble font stands on an octagonal shaft with a cross-finialled timber cope, removed from St John's Chapel in Aberdeen. The baptistery contains a niche housing a belfry stone from the former St James' Chapel, a cross made from Communion tokens, and a marble font.

A timber-framed brass War Memorial with timber pediment commemorates members of St James Church Stonehaven who fell in the First World War (1914-1918). A Second World War memorial inscription appears at the base.

The stained glass includes work of fine quality. The apsidal window depicting Christ crucified is by Clayton & Bell of London. A western window memorial to Dean Christie shows Christ's Baptism and a window from the former Tolbooth. Memorial windows in the nave include The Good Samaritan, commemorating Leslie Thomson and family of Invercowie House; a St James memorial to the Adams Family (1832-1955); and an Angel window in memory of Alexander Innes of Raemoor, who died in 1882. Sir Ninian Comper's baptistery windows commemorate David MacDonald, headmaster of the Episcopal school.

The boundary walls are of coped rubble, with pyramidally-coped square-section ashlar gatepiers and two-leaf decorative ironwork gates.