St Michael's Parish Church, Slateford Road, Edinburgh

St Michael's Parish Church, Slateford Road, Edinburgh

St Michael's is a large Early English church designed by John Honeyman and built between 1881 and 1883. It stands as a Grade A listed building, representing a significant example of late 19th-century ecclesiastical architecture.

The church comprises a clerestoried nave with aisles, a north transept, a vestry to the north-east, and a 41-metre tower to the north-west. To the west stands a two-storey plain gabled hall with a beadle's house behind it. The building is constructed of courses of stugged sandstone with smooth dressings, stiff-lead capitals, set-back buttresses, and hoodmoulded lancets (the larger ones flanked by nook-shafts). The detailing includes a two-tier moulded base course and moulded eaves throughout.

The tower is the dominant feature, rising in three stages. The first two stages have corner buttresses. At ground level, a deeply chamfered pointed-arch doorway faces north with nook-shafts and dog-tooth carvings, fitted with a two-leaf boarded door; a lancet window opens to the west. Above this, small paired lancets appear on all faces, with hoodmould and string course divisions. The second stage has a single lancet to the east and west faces, with pairs of lancets between string courses above on all faces. The third stage displays one massive louvred lancet to the east face and two to the other faces. The tower is crowned by a corbelled, blind-arcaded parapet. A stair tower occupies the south-east corner buttress, accessed via an arrowslit window stair and topped with an octagonal cap-house featuring colonettes and a conical stone roof, providing access to the parapet.

The north elevation (facing Slateford Road) features the tower at its right end. The four-bay aisle has paired lancets divided by buttresses, with a single lancet at the left containing a deep-set door within an advanced pointed-arch gabled panel. The gablehead contains a niche flanked by quatrefoil roundels. A clerestorey with three grouped lancets to each bay (a pair at the far left) sits above, with a hoodmould course running through.

The north transept, which houses the organ, is gabled with stepped three-light hoodmoulded lancets flanked by nook-shafts and a cill course, and corner buttresses supporting a cross finial. A pair of hoodmoulded lancets opens to the east. At the left, a single-storey canted vestry projects eastward, with a roll-moulded cusped doorway to the north, an oculus above, and bipartite or single lancet windows with hoodmould courses on each face.

The east elevation features a gable with stepped five-light lancets (the outer lights blinded), clustered nook-shafts, and a blind arcade below with polished granite colonettes. The south elevation, facing Harrison Road, mirrors the design with five bays of aisle and clerestorey. A gabled porch sits to the left of the final lancet, with the door deep-set in a four-pointed arch surround. Lancets appear on the aisle returns, and a further bay at the outer left has stepped three-light lancet windows with a relieving arch at ground level (lighting the narthex) and matching clerestorey above.

The west gable contains a pair of tall lancets with an oculus above. To its right, a two-stage semi-circular stair tower for the gallery rises. The roof is covered in blue-grey slates with considerable lichen accumulation and red ridge tiles, with plain skews.

The interior features a five-bay hoodmoulded arcade with masque label stops (of unidentified subject matter) on ashlar columns. The crossing arch is notably taller and richer than the rest, containing a fine gothic organ case. The organ itself was built by Brindley & Foster in 1895. A gallery at the rear provides access to the Session room and Store room within the tower. The ceiling is an open queenpost roof with braces on carved bosses, mostly foliate but with two featuring faces. Notable furnishings include a fine pulpit and lectern painted with fruits of the Bible by Gertrude Hope, and choirstalls positioned to the right of the reredos (which sits beneath the east window and was originally in front of the reredos). The original pews remain, though light fittings have been replaced. A screen sits beneath the balcony, with fielded-panelled doors containing leaded coloured glass lights leading to an inner narthex featuring slightly pitched timber roofs and a tiled floor with decorative border. A war memorial plaque is positioned here, with steps down to the porch and its minutely panelled planked door. A brass plaque commemorates Reverend George Wilson, the church's first minister.

The stained glass includes three east lancets by A Ballantine & Gardiner (1895), south aisle lights by James Ballantine & Son (1886), and a south-side lancet by Douglas Strachan (1925).

The hall is a two-storey rectangular buttressed structure on an L-plan with gables to the north and west, built in matching materials. The north gable has a tripartite window at ground level and another at first floor with an oculus above, both with hoodmould courses. The west elevation features shouldered windows. The first-floor hall has a braced wagon roof. A single-storey link connects the hall to the church at the west (recently extended at its rear), with a door in a shouldered frame and a small shouldered window.

The beadle's house is a two-storey, two-bay structure attached to the hall's rear, with a single-storey porch to the west and a pyramidal roof, constructed in matching materials.

The boundary consists of smooth ashlar squared and snecked walls in tall and short sections, topped with saddleback coping and wrought iron railings. Octagonal gatepiers with pointed caps mark the north doors. A large garden lies to the east of the site.