St Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Falcon Avenue, Edinburgh

St Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Falcon Avenue, Edinburgh

Robert Lorimer designed this large Italianate hall church between 1906 and 1907, with the nave completed in 1928 and 1929. The building comprises a towering six-bay nave with a canted apse, transepts, and a slender campanile. To the south, a courtyard is formed by two-storey buildings containing a meeting room and priest's house.

The church is constructed of square and snecked rubble with dressings of yellow droved ashlar, while the second phase is brick-built with rubble facing. Round-arched windows light the main church, while the domestic buildings feature rectangular windows—shouldered-arched at ground floor and with flat ogival arches at first floor, all with ashlar mullions. The church displays stone brackets and lugged gables throughout.

The nave rises as a tall rectangular structure of six bays with tall narrow windows divided by shallow offset buttresses. A sculpted panel of the Annunciation appears in the fourth bay from the west of the south elevation. The west elevation is gabled with a moulded circular window framed by sculptures of the four evangelists. To its right stands a single-storey flat-roofed five-sided baptistry with round-arched lancets, and to its left a single-storey flat-roofed chapel. The transepts are gabled, each containing a tall narrow window in the gable wall and an arrowslit window in the gablehead.

A tall square-section campanile rises in the re-entrant angle of the nave and south transept, featuring pilaster strips and a top stage with vertically banded masonry and two narrow openings to each face beneath a pagoda-type swept finial roof.

The east elevation is gabled with an arrowslit window in the gablehead. The canted apse has tall windows to its side faces and a gabled east face with a sculpture of the Crucifixion by Joseph Hayes in the gablehead. An octagonal stair tower occupies the re-entrant angle of the apse and north transept, featuring arrowslit windows and a bank of arrowslit windows in small round-arched panels beneath a bracketed flat roof. A single-storey flat-roofed lady chapel, added in 1970, stands in the re-entrant angle of the stair tower and north transept with rectangular windows.

The presbytery forms the east range of the courtyard, with a single-storey two-bay round-arched loggia facing the courtyard to the right and a carved roundel of the Agnus Dei in its spandrel. To the left stands a two-storey presbytery with chamfered corners swept to square at eaves level, featuring a tall stair window and single windows. Its elevation to Falcon Avenue includes a gabled bay to the right with bipartite and single windows, and a projecting ground floor to the left with a lean-to roof and single windows, surmounted by a single window at first floor. The west elevation displays a gabled bay to the right with single and bipartite windows, the left window having been altered and re-glazed.

The church office, or priest's house, also forms the east range of the courtyard as a two-storey and attic structure. A round-arched two-bay loggia faces the courtyard to the left with a large sculpture of Saint Peter in its spandrel and bipartite windows above. A gabled bay to the right contains bipartite windows. The elevation to Falcon Avenue shows four-bay windows at first floor; the bay to the left of centre features a small stained glass window at first floor above a carved panel of an angel holding a model of the priest's house by Louis Deuchars. The elevation to Falcon Gardens displays gabled outer bays with single windows to the left and bipartite and tripartite windows to the right. A central doorway is flanked by small windows, with small windows at first floor above. A single-storey link to the chancel with a catslide roof extends to the outer right. Windows throughout feature square leaded panes with coloured borders and toned glass to the church.

The church has a copper roof, originally pantiled, while domestic buildings are covered with pantiled bellcast roofs with skews of inlaid pantiles following the Lutyens manner and corbelled skewputts. Three corniced ridge stacks feature stop-chamfered arrises. Cast-iron moulded gutterheads appear throughout, with carved ashlar lionhead gutterheads to the east walls of the transepts.

The interior features whitewashed brick with an exposed red brick base to the arcade and aisle walls. A tall round-arched nave arcade with square-section piers rises to larger arches at the crossing, with the north transept cut by an organ chamber and side chapel. A panelled timber ceiling with heavy moulded cross-beams covers the nave, with a wagon roof to the centre and flat panels alongside. Wrought-iron monograms serve as anchors for tie rods across the narrow aisles. A three-bay round-arched loggia occupies the west end. The floor is laid in parquet with modern pine pews.

The furnishings include a raised marbled apse with inlay of fish motifs and a painted timber rood screen, now positioned on the east wall of the apse, also by Joseph Hayes. A white marble altar stands at the apse. The baptistry contains an embossed lead font with a fish motif by G P Bankart. A large painting of the Confession of Saint Peter by Frank Brangwyn, formerly in the apse, now hangs on the west wall. A carved crucifix and a bronze sculpture of Saint Peter on a marble base complete the apse furnishings.

Stained glass includes two lights in the apse depicting Christ's ministry and two lights in the north transept of Our Lady, both by Morris and Gertrude A Meredith Williams. The south transept contains lights depicting the Life of Saint Giles, while the west wall displays three lights of Saint Columba and Saint Catherine by Nina M Davidson. The north-east chapel contains three lights, a memorial to Canon John Gray, by Pierre Fourmaintraux.

The boundary wall is constructed of rubble with a saddleback coping and is fitted with plain cast and wrought-iron railings and ornamental fence posts. The tall arched main gate features cast-iron gatepiers and lamp standards, with "St Peter's Church" inscribed at the gate.