Park Church And Church Hall, Charlotte Street, Helensburgh

Park Church And Church Hall, Charlotte Street, Helensburgh

Park Church was designed by John Honeyman in 1862 as a rectangular-plan Gothic church with its entrance on the east elevation facing Charlotte Street. The interior was substantially remodelled by William Leiper in 1888. The church hall, adjoining the church to the north, was designed by G A Paterson of Stewart and Paterson architects in 1928, with the design carried out with minor alterations by H Mitchell in 1930. The building is constructed of squared, stugged and snecked cream and grey sandstone with ashlar dressings, a base course, and an eaves course with modillions on the south elevation.

The church features a distinctive east elevation with a gabled entrance bay at centre and a 3-stage tower with broach spire positioned to the northeast angle, advanced to the right. The tower has angle buttresses and string courses, with lancet windows on the east and west elevations at ground level and a slightly advanced 2-stage stair tower to the east elevation featuring arrow-loop stair lights. The belfry stage above has open plate tracery windows with colonnette-mullioned details and colonnettes to the reveals, nook-shafts below the eaves, and gabled lucarnes to the ashlar spire topped with a weathervane.

The entrance itself comprises a slightly advanced lean-to porch with an ashlar half-piend roof and billet moulding to the eaves, containing a pair of pointed-arch moulded doorways with boarded 2-leaf doors and decorative iron hinges. Above sits a rose window with quatrefoil tracery and a hood moulding, with a vesica window to the gablehead and a stone cross at the apex. A recessed gabled aisle bay to the left features a plate tracery window with colonnette-mullion and colonnettes to the reveals, and a trefoil opening to the gablehead.

The five-bay side elevations feature pointed-arch windows with plate tracery and saw-tooth coped buttresses throughout. The south elevation (King Street East side) is particularly modelled, with its modillioned eaves course. To the west, the vestry and halls block is recessed with a 2-stage canted stair block to the right, featuring three pointed-arch windows to the second stage. The west elevation comprises two gabled bays with three lancets at ground to the right bay and two lancets above, and two windows at ground to the left bay with two lancets above.

The roof is of grey slate with ashlar coped skews and bracketed skewputts.

The interior features a nave and side aisles divided by five-bay pointed-arch arcades with columns of Peterhead granite, though the end bays to the west are now sectioned off from the church. A gallery is positioned at the east (entrance) end. The west (chancel) end, which accommodates the vestry with a session-room at ground and a hall above, features a Gothic style reredos with no separate chancel. The ceiling is of plaster vaulted construction with raked seating. A Gothic style octagonal ashlar and marble pulpit dates to 1887, and an octagonal font to 1904. The organ is positioned in the northwest corner. The east rose window contains stained glass dating to 1883.

The church hall is a rectangular-plan structure adjoining the church to the north via a 2-storey link. It has a gabled east elevation with a lower flat-roofed entrance block abutting to the centre, containing a doorway with tripartite windows flanking, and a pointed-arch 3-light window with cusped tracery to the gable above.

A low rubble boundary wall with ashlar coping encloses the site, with square-plan ashlar piers surmounted by cast-iron lamps positioned to the east elevation.