Lorne Street Church, Bigkiln Street, Campbeltown

Lorne Street Church is a Gothic Revival church built in 1867 to a design by James Boucher of the Glasgow architectural firm Boucher & Cousland, with a church hall addition completed in 1889 by Henry E Clifford. The building is constructed of stugged squared and snecked red sandstone ashlar, with alternating red and yellow sandstone banded quoins and details to the entrance front.

The church has a rectangular plan with a gabled entrance front facing east, marked by a steeple at the apex and flanking square stair towers. The hall, added later in the 19th century, projects to the west from the rear elevation in an L-shaped single-storey form.

The east entrance front presents a two-bay gable end to the nave with flanking stair towers. A modern stepped base course leads to an arcaded doorpiece of three pointed arches with hoodmoulds and individual gables over each arch, with cusped door surrounds. Above are two pointed-arch plate tracery two-light windows with hoodmoulds. A corbelled buttress between the windows rises to support a square base carrying a pinnacled birdcage bellcote angled to the elevation, with a finial at the apex. The bellcote has pointed-arch openings and gablets to each face, supported on short columns at each corner, and retains the original bell. Octagonal engaged buttresses frame the elevation, each topped with octagonal pinnacles and finials.

The nave extends westward from the stair towers as a five-bay hall with two-storey pointed-arch lancet windows at each bay. A rose window centres the west elevation, with a single lancet to its right. A single-storey entrance porch to the vestry is positioned at the west end, flush with the south elevation, with a pointed-arch door and stone steps.

The church hall presents eight bays to the north elevation (facing the street), with gables at the first and second bays and a blank bay at the outer right. Windows at the first and second bays sit within pointed-arch recesses, with blind vesica and slit windows in the gablehead above. A buttress rises to the right of the fourth bay. The exposed east gable elevation features a pointed-arch entrance door. The west gable elevation is symmetrical across two bays, with bipartite windows beneath pointed relieving arches and a single central buttress with a slit window in the gablehead above.

Windows throughout the nave feature leaded glass with iron bars and coloured border glazing; the rose window is of coloured glass. The hall has six-pane windows with timber sash and case frames to the west and south elevations. Diagonally-boarded two-leaf entrance doors with ornate iron hinges serve the main entrance, and a vertically-boarded vestry door with a three-pane fanlight sits above. Grey slate roofs are piended with decorative iron finials at the stair towers. Profiled cast-iron gutters with widely spaced brackets serve the stair towers and nave; cast-iron gutters with downpipes and hoppers are found elsewhere. Single-flue square ashlar stacks rise at the west gable of the nave and the wallhead of the south stair tower. A two-flue apex stack with red circular cans sits at the west gable of the hall. Stone skew copes crown all gables.

The interior retains significant original fittings. A U-plan gallery with stop-chamfered panelling is supported on circular cast-iron columns with plain capitals at ground level and larger floreate capitals above, which support a plain plaster vaulted and ribbed ceiling with a decorative ventilator echoing the rose window design at the centre of the main vault. Steeply-raked horizontally-boarded pews with umbrella stands survive in the east section. A mid-20th-century organ screen infills the west gallery bay, the organ having been removed. Vertically-boarded wainscoting adorns the outer walls at gallery level, with decorative timber balustrades across the windows. The rose window in the west wall sits within a pointed-arch recess with hood mould and bracket stops. Gothic internal doors, four-panel with stop-chamfered details and perforated upper panels, serve various spaces. Stone gallery stairs with timber handrails provide access. The church hall interior features timber flooring and vertically-boarded wainscoting, with a large glazed screen at the west end.

The boundary wall to the north (Big Kiln Street) comprises a random rubble stepped dwarf wall with railings, terminating at the west in a semicircular-coped wall with a hooped pedestrian gate and at the east in square ashlar entrance gatepiers. The gatepiers have bases, stop-chamfered shafts, and gabled caps with trefoil decoration, supporting two-leaf cast-iron gates with spear finials. Matching gatepiers stand to the south, with a small section of original pattern gatepiers surviving to the right. Random rubble boundary walls enclose the south and east sides.