Old Parish Church, High Street, Montrose

Old Parish Church, High Street, Montrose

This is a rectangular-plan parish church built in 1791 by David Logan, with a tower and spire added by J Gillespie Graham between 1832 and 1834. A late 19th-century south apse was added later. The building combines sandstone rubble construction for the nave with ashlar work for the tower, and features uniform later 19th-century tracery throughout with mullioned, pointed-arch windows with cusped heads, chamfered margins, and battered cills.

The dominant west elevation displays a four-stage Perpendicular Gothic tower. At ground level, the entrance is framed by four colonnettes on each side, opening through a four-centred arch with a crocketed ogee hoodmould and finial. The doors are two-leaf panelled affairs decorated with carved studs, topped by a crenellated architrave and a fanlight with pointed-arch tracery. The tower rises through four stages: the first stage on the north and south faces has a four-centred headed, transomed and mullioned four-light window with cusped upper lights; the second stage repeats this treatment but with a six-light window and multifoil heads to the upper lights, with plate tracery above; the third stage carries clock faces set in cusped panelling on all four faces; and the fourth stage features paired lancets with shallow cusping to the heads, timber louvres, and crocketed ogee hoodmoulds with finials. A tracery parapet crowns the tower. Clasping buttresses flank the tower, panelled at the third stage and fluted at the fourth, rising to gableted and crocketed pinnacles that support quatrefoil tracery flying buttresses. An octagonal spire sits above, itself crocketed with two miniature lancets on each cardinal face and topped by a weathervane.

The nave gable ends to north and south are symmetrical, each displaying a four-centred headed, mullioned and transomed four-light window with cusped upper lights and a quatrefoil hoodmould. Crenellated parapets cap these gables. Flying corner buttresses with pierced, cusped quatrefoil panels rise to crocketed pinnacles with gableted lucarnes.

The east elevation shows a gable end with two windows at ground level and shorter windows above lighting an upper gallery, with a single similar bipartite window in the gablehead. A late 19th-century porch in the boundary wall opens into the nave at ground level, featuring a pointed-arch doorpiece with voussoirs, a plain panel beneath, two-leaf panelled doors, and flanking pilasters with gablet decoration to their capitals, cornice, and parapet.

The south elevation is dominated by a large, advanced canted bay forming the apse, rising the full height with four-light mullioned windows to its east and west faces and a blank centre panel. The flanking bays in the nave have windows at ground and shorter windows centred above. Plate glass with lattice glazing imitates leaded lights on the tower and west elevation; the nave windows feature leaded diamond-pane glazing and stained glass. A grey slate pitched roof covers the nave.

The interior contains two-tiered horseshoe galleries on Roman Doric columns along the north, east, and west sides. An octagonal timber pulpit with a sounding board sits on a balustraded podium in the south apse; it is panelled throughout. A later glazed screen stands at the west at ground level, with timber pews throughout. A panelled meeting room occupies the west space.

The churchyard to the east is divided into two parts by a public pathway called Churchyard Walk. Square, corniced and capped gatepiers mark the entrance to the pathway, with a cast and wrought-iron "Sturrock Lamp" bridging the piers. The churchyard contains a fine collection of monuments dating mainly from the mid-17th to early 19th centuries, including a large mural monument to the Arbuthnots from 1682 or later, featuring a Latin inscription framed in Ionic columns (capitals now much decayed). Coped rubble stone boundary walls enclose the churchyard. A late 19th-century boundary wall runs parallel to the north wall of the nave, with a base course and blocking course; an ashlar panelled and crenellated section projects to the southwest.