Guthrie Memorial Church, 166 Easter Road, Edinburgh

The Guthrie Memorial Church, built in 1881 to a design by Charles S S Johnston, is a Gothic-style church located on Easter Road in Edinburgh. The church is constructed from squared and snecked bull-faced sandstone with polished dressings. A prominent feature is the three-stage, square-plan entrance tower on the north-west side, topped with a decorative, tiered, spired ventilator and lucarnes. The building has a battered cill course and string courses, with pointed arches to the main openings, ornamented with carved ball-stops.

The east-facing elevation, looking onto Easter Road, features a gable-ended nave with four lancet windows at ground level, and a three-light window above, with simple tracery to the central light. A louvred arrowslit is in the gablehead. To the left of the nave is an advanced tower with a two-leaf, timber-panelled door set within a moulded gothic doorpiece, featuring a roundel in the tympaneum, flanked by pilaster buttresses topped with obelisks. An arrowslit sits in the upper stage, and there’s a blocking course at the wallhead. A bay to the far right has a secondary entrance, with a four-centred arch leading to a two-leaf, timber-panelled door, separated from the central bay by a truncated buttress with a polygonal top.

The north and south elevations are mirror images and each feature six bays. The bay to the far west of each elevation has a pair of pointed arch lancets at ground level and a three-light, shoulder-arched window above. The remaining bays feature full-height paired lancets. Above the deeply swept eaves, which are covered with shingles, are four decorative, gabled, timber lucarnes, with three-light, cusped windows and cusped bargeboards, along with terracotta finials. Rooflights are set within the intervening roof span.

A large circular ventilator sits on the ridge of the nave, featuring a battered lead apron and tiered timber columns, cusped at the head of the middle stage, with a swept conical slated roof topped with a lead finial.

The windows are fitted with polygonal (honeycomb) leaded glazing, which is protected by exterior perspex sheets. The roofs are covered in grey slate, with decorative terracotta ridge tiles. A rounded stone stack with battered coping is located at the south-east corner.

Inside, the church has timber traceried arcades supported on cast-iron columns, and a timber gallery at the west end.

A dwarf stone wall with later railings runs along the front of the property, with gabled gateways leading to the rear on both the north and south sides. There is also a church hall to the rear, rebuilt in 1891, with a swept slate roof, skylights, and a gabled central ventilator.