St Serf's Church, Ferry Road, Edinburgh

St Serf's Church, Ferry Road, Edinburgh

A decorated Gothic church designed by G Mackie Watson and built in 1901, with the chancel not completed until 1925. The church is accompanied by a single-storey extension containing a session house, kitchens and associated rooms, designed by Alan Keith Robertson and completed in 1924, and a later hall designed by George Read in 1960.

The church is built of squared and snecked stugged pale sandstone from Ravelston with red sandstone dressings from the Braids. It features a polygonal apse to the east, a projecting porch to the south-west, and a south transept. The north transept, tower and spire were never built. The 1924 extension matches the church in stone, while the 1960 extension is pebble-dashed. The building has a projecting base course, a continuous parapet, and cross finials on the ends of the roof ridge.

The south elevation contains a projecting porch with buttressed corners and castellated parapet, featuring a 2-leaf boarded timber door in a stop-chamfered pointed-arched doorpiece with a squared, dentilled hoodmould. Narrow cusped windows appear in the porch returns, with paired narrow cusped windows above, flanked by gabletted buttresses. Three subsequent bays contain 3-light windows with cusped curvilinear tracery in pointed-arched openings with hoodmoulds and cill courses, flanked by gabletted buttresses. The projecting south transept displays two tall 3-light windows with curvilinear tracery in pointed-arched openings with hoodmoulds and label stops, flanked by buttresses and with a banded gable course above. A hoodmoulded 3-light window to the vestry (at the base of the intended tower) projects to the right.

The east elevation features an entrance to the stair tower and vestry to the left, with a hoodmoulded stop-chamfered pointed-arched doorpiece giving access to a 3-sided open porch. Two angled doors in chamfered, depressed-arched surrounds sit either side, with a small cusped window between and two narrow off-set windows above. The piend-roofed polygonal apse displays a decorative castellated parapet, gargoyles and buttressed corners, adjoining the cross-finialled gable-end of the church. Three 2-light windows with cusped Perpendicular tracery sit in hoodmoulded pointed-arched openings with projecting cill courses. The single-storey extension containing the session room, choir room and kitchens adjoins to the right, followed by the 1960 hall extension.

The west elevation contains a boarded timber door to a 2-storey polygonal projection (containing stairs to the gallery) in a pointed-arched and hoodmoulded surround to the left. Two tall 3-light windows with cusped curvilinear tracery occupy the centre gabled bay (cut across by galleries), with a small pointed window above, flanked by narrow recessed bays containing small rectangular windows at ground floor level.

The north elevation is complete only to the position of the unbuilt north transept. A piend-roofed projection containing stairs to the gallery sits to the right, with narrow cusped windows in the end three facets. Three bays of 3-light windows with cusped curvilinear tracery in pointed-arched openings flanked by buttresses follow, with three blank bays to the left rendered.

The interior features a timber-panelled and ribbed tunnel roof. Tall arcades (blank at the north transept) run the length of the church with passage aisles. A gallery cuts across the west windows. The polygonal chancel contains stained glass in three 2-light windows by Gordon Webster (1970), an oak pulpit designed by Watson, and a painted choir screen by Pilkington Jackson (1926). Leaded stained glass windows with cusped tracery light the interior. The roof is covered in greenish Westmorland slates, with stone-coped skews with gabletted skewputts and a terracotta ridge.

A low red sandstone-coped boundary wall surrounds the property, with polygonal red sandstone gatepiers to Ferry Road, decoratively capped with gothic ornament. Decorative gothic wrought-iron gates serve Ferry Road and Clark Road, with cast-iron gateposts to Clark Road.