St Mary Star Of The Sea Rc Church, 106 Constitution Street, Leith, Edinburgh

St Mary Star of the Sea, Roman Catholic Church

A large towerless Gothic church designed by Edward Welby Pugin and Joseph A Hansom, built in 1853–4. The church was subsequently extended with three confessionals to the south aisle (George Craig, 1891), a north aisle (Pugin & Pugin, 1899), and a chancel, sacristy and chapels (Pugin & Pugin, 1911). The building is constructed in cream sandstone, squared and snecked stugged rubble with polished and droved dressings. It features offset saw-tooth coped buttresses, hoodmoulds with block label stops to the principal openings of the aisles and west front, an eaves cornice, and ashlar mullions throughout.

The nave comprises seven bays with side aisles. The west front has a pointed-arch moulded doorway at its centre, flanked by lancet windows with cusped heads. Above these is a tall five-light window with cinque- and quatrefoil tracery, with a blind oculus in the gablehead and an ornate cross finial. A large gabled porch projects from the westernmost bay of the south aisle, featuring a pointed-arch doorway and a bipartite window above with a quatrefoil head, alongside two arrowslit windows to the right. The porch has a shouldered detached stack with an octagonal drum at the top and a rectangular bipartite window on the return. The side aisles have lean-to roofs with bipartite windows featuring tracery. The three easternmost windows of the north aisle are single lights with cusped heads. The south aisle contains five projecting gabled confessional boxes connected by a screen wall with segmental-arched openings. The north aisle has a small projecting segmental-arched doorway to the westernmost bay, three stepped lancets on the west return, and a rose window with flowing tracery on the east return. A clerestory with pointed-arch windows of three lancets with cusped heads runs above the main arcading.

The chancel is a lower projecting structure with a three-sided apse, featuring tall two-light traceried windows to the outer sides and a broad three-light traceried window to the centre. Three bipartite windows with cusped heads appear on the north return, and an iron cross finial crowns the structure. The projecting gabled south transept has a flat-roofed addition in the re-entrant angle with the south aisle, incorporating a secondary door and single and bipartite rectangular windows to the south wall. Two tall lancets with a moulded cill course and an arrowslit window occupy the gablehead. The east elevation is organised in three bays with rectangular bipartite windows at ground floor; the centre bay slightly projects and breaks the eaves in a gablehead featuring a bipartite pointed-arch window with tracery. Small diamond-shaped panels with a string course step over the outer windows. All windows contain leaded lights. The roof is steep black slate with a crested stone ridge to the chancel and south transept; ashlar skews and gabletted skewputts complete the detailing. Decorative eaves guttering, gutterheads and fixtures adorn the chancel, south transept, and part of the north aisle.

The interior features a tall braced collar roof with timber shafts rising from stone corbels and pointed arcading with octagonal stone piers. A tall chancel arch, flanked by niches containing statues of saints, leads into the chancel. The chancel has an arcade to the side aisle and an arch painted with angels leading to the apse, which has a marble floor and balustrade. The apse contains an elaborate stone and marble reredos with blind arcading and ornately carved canopied niches housing saints, whilst the ceiling is decorated in blue and gold with stencilled patterns and stars. A large organ flanks the west window. Original timber pews remain in place. Two additional ornate and richly carved alabaster altars with red marble columns occupy the side aisles, probably dating to the early 20th century. A decorated Gothic monument to Reverend John Noble (died 1867) is also present.

The stained glass includes a central east window by The Cloky Stained Glass Studios (1955) and flanking bipartite windows from 1881 and 1882, resited here in 1912. Most other windows date from the late 19th century, with those in the north aisle circa 1920.

A tall rubble boundary wall to the south has semi-circular coping and a chamfered doorway to the southwest with an iron star inset. A low rubble wall to the front has saddleback coping and octagonal coped gatepiers with quatrefoil insets, accompanied by elaborate cast-iron gatepiers.