E Boundary Wall, Inverleith Parish Church, 41 Inverleith Gardens

E Boundary Wall, Inverleith Parish Church, 41 Inverleith Gardens

This is the east boundary wall of Inverleith Parish Church, a significant 19th-century ecclesiastical complex.

The church itself was designed by Hardy and Wight and built between 1879 and 1881. It is an Early English style building arranged on an I-plan, with a four-stage square-plan pinnacled tower to the north-east adjoining a centrally buttressed north gable. The walls are constructed of snecked, bull-faced, squared sandstone rubble with smooth sandstone dressings. Details include a base course, string course, chamfered plate tracery openings, bull-faced quoins, and foliate label stops. The church features late 19th-century stained-glass memorial windows at the north entrance.

A small church hall designed by Hardy and Wight in 1884 is linked to the south-east of the main building, whilst a large hall by R S Johnstone built in 1937 stands to the south.

The north (entrance) elevation presents a central buttressed two-bay gable with six arcaded pointed-arched plate tracery windows to the ground floor and two tall hoodmoulded, transomed plate tracery windows to the upper gable. A hoodmoulded pointed oval vent sits at the gablehead, topped by a carved stone foliated cross finial. The entrance itself is a carved pointed-arched opening with colonnettes and a two-leaf timber boarded door, positioned within a buttressed tower to the far left. A semi-octagonal stairtower with octagonal spire roof and wrought-iron finial stands to the far right.

The east elevation features the tower to the far right, a four-bay buttressed aisle with bi-partite pointed arched windows, and a three-bay clerestory with pointed arched plate tracery windows. A gabled two-storey advanced transept to the left has two bipartite windows to the ground floor and a tripartite pointed arched window to the gallery, with a porch in the right re-entrant angle. The small 1884 hall adjoins to the far left.

The south (rear) elevation shows a five-sided canted and stepped apse projecting from the gable end, with a chimneystack terminating a recessed gable. Single-storey blocks comprising a vestry and session room are positioned between the church and the large 1937 hall to the south.

The west elevation mirrors the east, with a semi-octagonal stair tower to the far left and a gabled one-and-a-half-storey porch. The nave and transept follow a similar arrangement to the east elevation.

Throughout the exterior, windows are predominantly diamond-paned with commemorative stained glass in the lower arcaded windows to the north. Doors are boarded timber with decorative cast-iron hinges and fittings. The pitched roofs are covered in grey slates with plain stone skews and terracotta ridge tiles to the small hall, with shaped skewputts.

The interior features an oak-panelled entrance porch with diamond-paned glass panels supporting an overhanging panelled gallery. Four pointed-arched plain arcades spring from large Doric stone columns, with flying buttressed aisles and a plain clerestory. Depressed arches open into the transepts. A timber-panelled and carved wagon roof spans the interior, and a raised chancel houses a carved oak pulpit, lectern and communion table (a 1920 war memorial), with a full-height pointed-arched opening to the rear housing a timber-carved organ.

The interior was extensively redecorated following a fire in 1931 by J R McKay, with wood carving undertaken by Scott Morton & Co.

The small hall of 1884 is constructed of bull-faced snecked sandstone with margin-paned lattice windows. A tall shouldered wall-head chimneystack rises to the east, and the interior features timber-boarded dado panelling.

The large hall of 1937 extends seven bays to the south and three bays to the west. It has a smooth cement brise-block base course rising to cill height, eighteen-pane painted metal windows, and pebble dash render. A square brise-block porch is positioned to the south-east. The interior contains timber-boarded dado panelling and a stage to the east.

Low coped snecked rubble boundary walls link the complex, extending east and west from the north elevation. These are interrupted by rusticated piers of square and octagonal plan, topped with ribbed domed caps surmounted by turned and twisted cast-iron gaslight balusters.