Churchyard, Liberton Parish Church, Edinburgh

The churchyard encloses Liberton Parish Church, a Gothic church designed by J Gillespie Graham and built in 1815 on the site of an earlier church. It incorporates a 1736 Baird family vault at the rear. The church itself is a rectangular structure with a 3-stage tower to the west.

The church is constructed of coursed, stugged ashlar with polished ashlar dressings. It features a base course, corner buttresses, hoodmoulds, and a cornice. The parapet is crenellated, with cruciform finials to the gables. The windows are predominantly of simple decorated tracery with stone mullions and transoms and plain glass. Each elevation is symmetrical.

The south elevation is 5 bays wide. Two pointed-arched doorways are positioned in advanced buttressed and gabled penultimate bays, each with a boarded timber door and a window above. Small 17th-century rectangular blocks carved with figures and an hourglass stand beside each door, probably fragments from earlier tombs. Two tall 3-light windows light the centre bay, with a cast-iron railed Gothic memorial to Rev Grantam in red sandstone ashlar between them. Single windows light the outer bays, and on the west return beside the tower is a door with a window above, beneath a crowstepped gable rising to abut the tower.

The 3-stage tower is furnished with a corbelled, crenellated parapet and thin gabled pinnacles. A door opens to the west at ground level, with a single-light window above and to each return. Each stage above has 2-light louvred windows.

The east elevation is gabled with crowstepped gables and a round opening with a trefoil window to the gablehead. Two doorways at ground floor to the outer bays are each topped with a 2-light window, while the centre bay is lit by a large 3-light window.

The north elevation has a central advanced, buttressed, gabled bay with gabled pinnacles, a ground-floor door, and two tall 2-light windows flanking it. The bay is flanked by two windows to left and right.

Internally, the church follows a T-plan created by stair-halls at the northeast and northwest corners. Originally built to accommodate 1,480 people, it was altered to seat 1,000 in 1882. Woodwork was stripped in 1928. The interior features a plain compartmentalised ceiling and oak furnishings. Gothic-panelled-fronted galleries on three sides are carried on slender cast-iron columns. The pulpit stands to the south with a (dummy) organ loft above; the organ dates from 1928 and is of simple Gothic panelling. The communion table is similarly panelled. A carved memorial to Rev W Purdie (died 1834), signed by A Ritchie, appears on the west wall beneath the gallery. Stained glass windows by Ballantine from 1905 light the south wall and east end (2 lights).

The Elders' Room was originally the Baird vault from the earlier church. This small vaulted room to the northeast houses three Baird family memorials: two white marble plaques with the family crest on the north and south walls, and a large Baroque grey and white marble memorial of 1736 on the west wall. There is also a memorial to Margaret Steuart in white and grey marble, designed by Richard Cooke in 1804.

The graveyard is enclosed by rubble-coped rubble walls with ashlar polygonal gatepiers to the south and wrought-iron gates. A pedestrian gateway adjoins a stone arched overthrow beside the Session House. The graveyard contains numerous fine 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century memorials. A Neo-classical Stevenson memorial adjoins the north wall in grey ashlar with a marble plaque in a carved surround. A railed enclosure with ashlar plaques marks the Duncan family plot. Free-standing Baroque carved memorials to the Aitkens (1690s) and Haliburtons (1760) stand to the southeast of the church. To the southwest is an ornate, free-standing, pedimented and pilastered memorial to the Baxter family, dated 1737, with engaged caryatids carrying the entablature at the sides. A late 17th-century table memorial to the west of the church commemorates the Straiton family of Tower Farm and is elaborately carved with a recumbent effigy within, though now damaged.

The graveyard was extended in the early 20th century to the west and north, bordered by low ashlar walls and railings to Liberton Brae. Two sets of ashlar gatepiers and gates open to the west (to Liberton Brae) and to the north (to Kirkbrae). A 1914-18 war memorial stands inside the west gates to Liberton Brae.

The Offertory House is a single-storey, 2-bay building inside the south gates, contemporary with the church and in the same style. It is harled, with a 20th-century lean-to to the east. A timber-boarded door stands to the left and a window to the right, each with square hoodmoulds. An arched window opens to the north. The building features crowstepped gables (blind to the south) and a polygonal stack to the south. Original timber fittings remain inside.