St Matthew's Parish Church, 5 Braid Road, Edinburgh

St Matthew's Parish Church is an Early English Gothic church designed by Hippolyte Jean Blanc and built between 1889 and 1890, with church halls added in 1896 and a chancel in 1901. The building occupies a prominent corner site on sloping terraces at 5 Braid Road, Edinburgh.

The church is constructed in red sandstone, squared and snecked rubble with polished dressings. It has a cruciform plan with side aisles, a chancel, a central flèche, a vestry, and church halls to the south-east. The design features pointed arch-openings with chamfered reveals, hoodmoulds and block label stops, offset gablet-capped buttresses angled at corners, and moulded stepped string courses rising to the cill courses of the principal windows. The eaves feature a moulded cornice, and the doors are timber with intersecting lancet panelling.

The west elevation is framed by buttresses crowned with polygonal pinnacles at the wallhead. A slightly projecting vestibule at ground floor contains a moulded deeply chamfered doorway at the centre with colonettes and 2-leaf doors featuring Y-tracery panelling. Two bipartite windows of slender pointed arches with colonettes flank this doorway. Above rises a large 4-light window in the off-set gablehead, framed by buttresses with nook-shafts, slender mullions, and Y-tracery incorporating trefoils and a central mandorla. A stepped string course and small shafted window appear in the finialled gablehead above.

The side aisles are six bays long, single storey with lean-to roofs and paired narrow trefoil-headed windows. A pinnacled buttress marks the south-west angle of the south aisle. The main entrance doorway is located in a shallow stepped surround in the westernmost bay of the north aisle, a broader version of the west door. Tripartite clerestorey windows of stepped lancets with blind trefoils in the spandrels create a plate tracery effect. An ornate flèche rises over the crossing with a slated base, ornate timber carving, and a leaded spire with weathervane.

The north and south transepts have gabled end elevations, each with two large 3-light windows featuring cinquefoil tracery divided by a central buttress, a string course, and a louvred trefoil in the gablehead. The return elevations are blank except for two string courses and a shouldered wallhead stack of paired drum stacks on the east return of the north transept.

The chancel is a rectangular gabled structure with a large 4-light window displaying cinque- and quatrefoil tracery, a string course, and a small stepped tripartite window in the gablehead. A bipartite plate traceried window with a pierced quatrefoil in the spandrel appears on the north return. An octagonal vestry with a finialled pyramidal roof occupies the re-entrant angle formed with the north transept, featuring narrow trefoil-headed windows under a stepped string course and a doorway in the linking passage to the north.

The church hall is a single storey structure adjoining the south side of the chancel, with a gabled elevation to the north displaying a plate traceried lancet window, a chamfered doorway to the right, and a secondary shouldered-arch doorway to the rear west elevation. Ridge ventilators and roof lights are present.

The roofing comprises green slate with red crested ridge tiles, saw-tooth skews with gablet-capped skewputts, and a west gable with gablet coping. Moulded eaves gutters and gutterheads are fitted throughout. Square-pane leaded glazing with ornamental patterns to the heads of the clerestorey windows completes the external appearance.

The interior features an arcaded nave with quatrefoil-section piers bearing shaft-rings and octagonal bases, with diapered spandrels. Nook-shafts divide the chancel bays. A raked timber gallery above a tiled west vestibule features an arcaded parapet over an arcaded screen with cusped openings containing ornamental stained glass. The nave roof is boarded and wagon-shaped with crossbeams rising from short corbel shafts. Two arches open into the transepts.

The chancel is moulded with colonettes and arcaded, featuring a painted boarded wagon roof. A trefoil-arched door in the north wall opens to the vestry. The marble floor and organ by Henry Willis & Sons (1901) occupy the south wall. The vestry is tiled and panelled.

Furnishings include carved timber choirstalls, dado and altar in the chancel by Scott Morton & Co.; a polygonal carved stone pulpit with marble inlay and colonettes, and a carved stone font en suite by W H Kerr; ornate wrought-iron hanging gasoliers to the nave by H J Blanc.

The stained glass includes the east window depicting four evangelists and scenes from the life of Christ by Edward Burne-Jones, made by Morris & Co. in 1900; the west window depicting Christ as friend, teacher, philanthropist and missionary by Percy Bacon & Co. in 1905; two lights in the south aisle depicting St Columba and St Ninian by William Wilson in 1905; and south transept windows containing memorials to the First World War.

The church hall contains cast-iron columns and a timber roof on stone corbels with large roof lights.

The boundary wall is constructed of low rubble with cast-iron railings. Gatepiers feature domed coping. Two flights of steps lead up the terraces with squat piers to alternate treads. Four ornamental wrought- and cast-iron lamp posts with spherical lamps complete the boundary treatment.