Pilrig Dalmeny Street Church, Pilrig Street, Edinburgh

Pilrig Dalmeny Street Church, Pilrig Street, Edinburgh

This is a substantial Italian Gothic church designed by Peddie & Kinnear, monogrammed and dated 1861, with adjoining halls by Sydney Mitchell and Wilson added in 1892. The church itself is a heavy rectangular-plan building constructed in cream sandstone, squared and snecked rubble with polished dressings. It features a distinctive south corner tower and halls to the northwest. The base course displays pointed-arch openings with colonnette mullions bearing foliate capitals and pronounced rubble voussoirs, offset buttresses, moulded string courses and skews, and elaborate ashlar cross finials throughout.

The tower rises in three stages topped by a stone spire. It is buttressed at the angles. The first stage contains a doorway to the southwest on Pilrig Street, set within a gabled panel with crocketted finial. The doorpiece itself is roll-moulded with a pointed arch and marble colonnettes with carved capitals. A shouldered-arched doorway to the side carries roundels to the spandrels and a sculpted roundel in the tympanum. The date 1861 appears on the buttress to the right, with the architects' initials PK to the left. The second stage has a moulded cill course. To the southwest is a six-light arcade of small windows with trefoil-arched heads and pierced trefoils in the spandrels at the gablehead of the entrance. To the southeast sits a bipartite window with plate tracery and a recessed clock on the southeast, southwest, and northwest faces. The top stage comprises three louvred lancet windows with trefoil-tracery heads on each face. The tall polygonal rubble spire features corner pinnacles with nook-shafts and louvred lucarnes, both topped with tall pyramidal roofs of banded fishscale and ashlar masonry.

On the southeast elevation facing Leith Walk, there are three bays including the corner tower to the outer left. A broad gabled entrance bay at the centre contains a doorway in a gabled and finialled panel, flanked by bipartite windows with plate tracery in gabled and finialled panels. A large wheel window with plate tracery and small oculus sits in the gablehead above. The bay to the right comprises a squat two-stage stair tower with banded fishscale slating to a pyramidal bellcast roof, a quatrefoil oculus at the lower stage, and a stepped four-light window with trefoil heads at the top stage.

The southwest elevation on Pilrig Street displays three bays including the tower to the outer left, arranged with M-gables and a continuous row of three gabled bipartite windows with plate tracery above the base course in each bay. Large windows comprise a quatrefoil-banded rose window over trefoiled arcading with trefoil pierced spandrels above, with quatrefoil oculi in the gableheads. A dividing buttress carries a birdcage pinnacle of trefoil arches in banded fishscale and ashlar masonry, topped with a delicate iron cross finial.

Lattice-patterned leaded lights feature throughout, and the roof is slate with lead flashings.

The interior is lofty, with raked galleries featuring a panelled balustrade and quatrefoil insets on cast-iron columns with foliate ashlar capitals. A tall and elegant arch-braced timber roof with carved and moulded corbels spans the space, with timber arcading to inset dormer windows. An elaborately carved Gothic pulpit and reredos, probably dating to circa 1892, occupy the chancel, along with an organ by Foster & Andrews dated 1903, a communion table, and a font with blind arcading. The original non-figurative stained glass scheme remains complete, designed by Daniel Cottier of Field & Allan circa 1862, with the east rose window by Ballantine studio.

The halls to the northwest are executed in Tudor Gothic style with detailing matching the main church. They feature rectangular windows with ashlar mullions, transoms, and quatrefoil insets.

The southwest elevation of the halls on Pilrig Street contains five irregular bays. A broad angled bay to the outer right has a tripartite window at ground level and a large stepped window above, with a chamfered angle at the ground floor. A small leaded bellcote with open arcading and slate roof sits above. A flanking circular stair tower to the left carries an open arcaded towerhead of round-arched bipartite windows with marble colonnette mullions and a polygonal roof set in a re-entrant angle. An angled centre bay displays bipartite and single windows at ground level and a stepped tripartite breaking the eaves in a broad gablehead above. A flanking bay to the left, narrower and angled, carries bipartite windows matching the centre bay. A recessed bay to the outer left contains a pointed-arch doorway with hoodmould, block label stops, and blank tympanum, a rectangular window of five small lights, and a gabled wallhead dormer with bipartite window above.

The northwest elevation is gabled, with two bipartite windows at ground floor, single and three grouped windows at first-floor level above, and a small stepped tripartite in the gablehead.

The halls feature leaded pane glazing set in timber sash and case windows at ground floor, with slate roof, lead flashings, and finials.