St. Giles Parish Church, Kilgraston Road, Edinburgh

St. Giles Parish Church stands on Kilgraston Road, Edinburgh. Designed by Robert Morham and completed in 1871, it is an English Gothic church built in squared and snecked yellow sandstone with polished ashlar dressings and contrasting red sandstone pilasters and colonettes.

The church follows a cruciform plan with a tower and steeple to the west, a church hall and additional structures to the rear. The building features a coped base course, buttresses and clasping buttresses throughout, foliate capitals, pointed-arched plate traceried windows, and a corbelled cornice.

The tower is square in plan and rises in three stages, advanced from the nave at the centre of the three-bay west elevation. The central gabled entrance contains a broad pointed-arched doorway flanked by three red sandstone colonettes with fleuron studded and moulded surrounds above. A carved foliate patera is set in the gablehead. The doors are two-leaf boarded with decorative wrought-iron hinges and a three-light fanlight. Two narrow windows sit above the entrance under M-shaped hoodmoulding. The second stage features three narrow windows with relieving arches grouped to the west. The third stage is offset above the coping, with an arcaded apron below pointed-arched belfry louvres, angle buttresses, and a cornice to the belfry section. An arcaded balustrade above is broken by gabletted clocks to each face, with offset pinnacles at each angle. A slender lucarned stone spire crowns the tower.

The nave and apse extend across three bays on the west elevation, with the entrance and tower occupying the centre bay. Gabled bays flank the sides, each with a coped blind arcade at ground level pierced by square-headed windows with stop-chamfered reveals and carved foliate paterae in the spandrels. Tall two-light windows occupy the upper storey. The south elevation is divided by buttresses into four bays excluding the two-bay transept. It contains a small bipartite window in the outer left bay, a three-light window at ground in the second bay with a two-light window above breaking the eaves in a gable, and tall narrow two-light windows in the third and fourth bays, with a single window in the outer right bay. The north elevation mirrors the south elevation except for a hoodmoulded entrance with a deep-set boarded door in the outer right bay and a window breaking the eaves in a gabled and finialled dormerhead in the second bay from the right. The east elevation features a canted and piend-roofed apse with a central two-light window and smaller three-light windows flanking. A three-light window occupies the centre above, with two-light windows in the outer left and right bays.

Two-bay projecting transepts extend to north and south, each with two-light windows in both bays. Diminutive rose windows sit in the gableheads. Hoodmoulded pointed-arched doorways open to the north returns, fitted with two-leaf boarded doors with decorative wrought-iron hinges and boarded fanlights. A polygonal ventilator above the crossing is louvred with a leaded conical roof and apron.

A two-storey piend-roofed link block adjoins the church in a T-plan arrangement with the church hall and house at the southeast angle. The single-storey pitched-roof church hall features a coped base course, a decorative pyramidal ventilator with wrought-iron finial, and gabletted skewputts. Its east elevation contains three bipartite windows, the west elevation two bipartite windows, and a tripartite window is set in the south gable. A piend-roofed lean-to and rendered flat-roofed extension extend to the south.

The church officer's house is piend-roofed with base and dividing band courses and two wrought-iron finials. The west elevation shows two single windows and a pointed-arched entrance to the church hall with a deep-set two-leaf boarded door and plate glass fanlight. A shouldered doorway to the house occupies the north elevation. A single window at ground level opens to the east, with two single windows breaking the eaves at first floor, the left with a piend-roofed and finialled dormerhead. A shouldered wallhead stack rises from the north elevation.

The roof is finished in grey slate with moulded eaves guttering. Some original rainwater goods remain, including hoppers and decorative brackets. Cruciform stone finials crown the west gables, north and south transepts, and tower pinnacles.

The interior features a wagon-roof on iron-framed timber-clad arches with stone corbels. A gallery to the west contains decorative cast-iron columns. Timber dado panelling lines the walls, and timber pews are fitted with brass umbrella holders. The figurative stained glass was principally executed by A Ballantine & Gardiner. An organ by Brindley & Foster was rebuilt by N P Mander in 1963. A decorative Gothic Communion Table and polygonal pulpit, supported on colonettes, are possibly by Scott Morton & Co. An unusual front in 1920s style with Gothic detailing is present. Staircases occupy the north and south sides of the main west entrance. The south transept was converted to a side chapel in 1965.

The boundary walls include a low saddleback wall to the street, a high coped brick wall to the south, a high coped rubble wall to the east, and iron railings surmounting a retaining wall to the north.