Liberton Northfield Parish Church And Hall, 280 Gilmerton Road, Edinburgh

Liberton Northfield Parish Church and Hall, built in 1869 by J W Smith, stands on Gilmerton Road in Edinburgh. The church’s belfry stage and spire were added in 1873 by Peddie and Kinnear. It is a T-plan building with later halls and offices attached to the west. The church is designed in the Early English Gothic style, demonstrating inventive interior detailing. The building’s east gable faces the road, with a tower to the northeast and triple gabled transepts to the north and south.

The church is constructed from bull-faced stone, cleaned and dressed with cream sandstone, featuring a base course, string course, buttresses, and gable finials. Red and cream polychromatic stonework appears on the east elevation and the base of the tower.

The east elevation, facing Gilmerton Road, features a tower to the right, a three-stage, buttressed square tower with steps leading to a doorway at its base. This doorway has a gabled surround and a timber boarded door, with a small window above for stair lighting. A later addition of two stages in 1873 provides paired pointed-arched, louvred belfry windows on each side. A corbel table sits below the wallheads, supporting an octagonal broached stone spire topped with a poppyhead finial and small lucarnes. To the left of the tower is a gable with three tall lancet windows containing plate tracery, each with a hoodmould and uncarved block stops. A small trefoil-headed ventilator opening is positioned in the gablehead, featuring a moulded cill course set in a decorative cusped arch supported by dwarf engaged red stone columns with foliate capitals. A second pointed arch-headed doorway sits in the gabled aisle to the left, with a stepped string course above it and a small blind oculus above.

The north and south elevations have plain, tall single lancet windows illuminating the nave, and three smaller lancets on the gabled side transepts.

The roof is covered with grey slates, punctuated by three slated, triangular, louvred ventilators on each slope. It features an ashlar finial on the east and an ashlar stack on the west gable.

Inside, the church has a raked floor, central block of timber pews, and white painted walls. Notable features include an ornate, arch-braced timber roof, radial bosses with star plate tracery springing from short ashlar colonnettes with heavily carved foliate capitals, carried on moulded corbels, with only the transepts featuring corbelled foliate caps. A later organ is centered on the west wall, housed in an arched surround with five quatrefoil and multifoil windows above, framed by timber bosses from the roof. The transepts feature a triple arcaded colonnade of pointed arches, diamond windows to the clerestory, and an open timber roof.

A 19th-century single-storey church hall adjoins the building at a right angle to the northwest, constructed from squared and coursed sandstone with cream ashlar dressings and housing a timber boarded interior. A plain, early 20th-century, two-storey office wing is attached to the southwest, built from red coursed sandstone, featuring nine-pane timber windows with top-hopper vents, timber barge boards, and a grey slate roof.

Walls and gatepiers of coursed rubble, with ashlar coping, railings to Claverhouse Drive and Gilmerton Road, and rubble-coped walls to Mount Vernon Road, enclose the property. Two pairs of ashlar gatepiers with gablet ashlar caps stand on Gilmerton Road, complemented by cast-iron gates.