St Michael's Church, Helensburgh

St Michael's Church, Helensburgh

St Michael's Church was designed by Robert Rowand Anderson and built between 1866 and 1868. The tower was added in 1930. A church hall was constructed in 1912, adjoining the south side of the building.

The church is a rectangular-plan structure in the early French Gothic style, comprising a nave with side aisles and a deep chancel. A tower rises from the north-east re-entrant angle. The side elevations have five bays, and the west elevation features a gabled facade with a rose window.

The exterior is built of snecked red sandstone rubble with red sandstone ashlar dressings. Decorative details include cream Caen stone applied to the tympanum of the west door, rose window, and eaves course. The church features base, cill, hoodmould and eaves courses running around the building. Pointed-arch doorcases and bipartite windows with ashlar mullions and pointed-arch lights are characteristic of the side elevations. The chancel has a tripartite window. Other openings are single windows. Dragon gargoyles ornament the side elevations, and buttresses with saw-tooth coping provide structural support.

The west elevation, facing William Street, comprises three bays. The central section is a taller gabled nave framed by buttresses, with lower aisles flanking either side and angle buttresses. The centrepiece is a deeply chamfered doorcase with a moulded and colonnette surround. Twin boarded doors, fitted with decorative iron hinges, flank a trumeau. The tympanum displays carved panels depicting the four evangelists, surmounted by a vesica containing a figure of Christ. Above sits a multifoil rose window with decorated label stops to its hoodmould. Single windows light the aisles.

The north elevation, facing Princes Street West, displays five symmetrical bays divided by buttresses. At ground level are four bipartite windows and a doorcase positioned in the second bay from the right. This doorcase has a moulded pointed-arch and colonnette surround and is fitted with a boarded door with decorative iron hinges. A clerestory of five single windows lights the upper level.

The chancel's east elevation contains a tripartite window with a vesica window above. Clasping buttresses occupy the angles. A bipartite window is positioned on the right return, and a side chapel occupies the left return.

The south elevation mirrors the north elevation in detail but lacks a doorcase.

The tower is set within the re-entrant angle formed by the nave and chancel. It comprises three stages and is topped with a stepped battlemented parapet supported by angle buttresses. The first stage is notably tall and features a semi-circular stair turret with a conical stone roof on the east elevation. The belfry stage has louvred windows with plate tracery.

The roof is steeply pitched grey slate with a cream ridge cresting. The skews are ashlar-coped, and stone crosses crown the apex on both the east and west elevations.

The interior is richly decorated. The nave arcades span five bays with columns surmounted by scrolled acanthus leaf capitals. A carved oak porch screen spanning the west end features ogee arches and diaper-work decoration, with a figure of St Michael positioned in a central niche.

The rood screen is finely carved with ogee arches. In the chancel stand choir stalls, and behind them is a mosaic reredos depicting a haloed Roman centurion. An alabaster pulpit sits on an ashlar plinth. The organ is positioned to the left of the chancel.

The church contains extensive stained glass by leading 19th-century makers. The chancel windows, executed by Stephen Adam in 1881, display The Garden of Gethsemane, Ascension, Pentecost, and scenes from the Old and New Testaments. A north chancel window showing St Michael and St John was also made by Adam in 1881. The north aisle windows include Noli Me Tangere by Charles Eamer Kempe (1888), St Luke and St Matthew by Kempe (1893), Noli Me Tangere by Shrigley and Hunt (1876), and Charity and Good Samaritan attributed to the Glasgow School after Cottier, possibly by Alex Walker (1884). The south aisle contains God in Glory and Lord is my Shepherd by Clayton and Bell (circa 1870), Mary Magdalen washing the feet of Christ by Kempe (1882), and The Annunciation and The Manger by Clayton and Bell (1889). The side chapel window shows The Visitation by Kempe. At the west end, the rose window is by Kempe, while flanking windows depicting Christ and the little Children and Christ walking on the Water are by Stephen Adam.

The church hall, built in 1912, is a single-storey structure over a basement with a rectangular plan. It adjoins the south side of the church via a two-bay link. The hall is constructed of snecked and stugged red sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings. It features a base course, hoodmoulds with block label stops, chamfered arrises, and long and short quoins. Pointed-arch doorcases and windows provide openings.

The west elevation of the hall, which faces the entrance, features an advanced gabled porch to the centre containing a doorpiece with two-leaf boarded doors fitted with glazed inset panels. A door is positioned on the return to the right, and a window sits to the left. Two closely spaced windows light a recessed link section to the left. The roof is piended grey slate.