St Ninians Church, Commercial Street, Leith, Edinburgh is a Grade C listed building in the City of Edinburgh local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 30 March 1994. Church. 12 related planning applications.
St Ninians Church, Commercial Street, Leith, Edinburgh
- WRENN ID
- roaming-timber-fern
- Grade
- C
- Local Planning Authority
- City of Edinburgh
- Constituency
- Edinburgh North and Leith MP: Tracy Gilbert (Lab)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 30 March 1994
- Type
- Church
- Address
- St Ninians Church, Commercial Street, Leith, Edinburgh, EH6 6JD
- OS grid reference
- NT 267 766
- Coordinates
- 55.97704, -3.17474
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
St Ninians Church, located on Commercial Street in Leith, Edinburgh, was designed by John Henderson in 1839. It is a former Gothic chapel-of-ease with an attached school, constructed from coursed cream sandstone ashlar with polished dressings.
The entrance elevation features a central Tudor-arched door with heavily moulded reveals, topped by a tablet that has a carved longboat. Above this is a tall three-light Perpendicular window, all set within a deeply chamfered pointed-arch recess that has a crocketed crest. Flanking the entrance are octagonal towers with three diminishing stages. The first stage has a lancet on the outer face, the second stage is blank with a string course that aligns with the gable, and the third stage has lanterns (belfry) with blind lancets on each face. The spires have been removed, and there is a giant two-stage base course topped with a ball finial.
The north elevation facing Commercial Street has eight bays, featuring full-height Tudor-arched panels with window openings in each bay. The reveals are chamfered, and there is a recessed dividing panel at the center. The left four bays belong to the church and have a coped parapet. The third bay from the left has a broad access that has been added at ground level. The fifth bay from the left has a gabled entrance leading to a hall beyond, with a window above.
The west elevation is three bays wide and gabled, with a rectangular door at the center and high rectangular flanking windows that replace a later slapped opening. Above are Tudor-arched windows, which are blind at the base.
On the south elevation, there are four bays of the church to the right, with windows similar to those on the other elevations. Beyond this is an irregular rubble range, featuring a two-storey, three-bay deep former school building that projects at the center and connects to the Citadel.
The windows have been variously replaced. The church is covered with grey slates, and it has moulded ashlar-coped skews and flat skewputts.
Inside the church, there is a gallery supported by cast-iron columns, a plaster-ribbed ceiling with stencilling, and a hoodmoulded blind Tudor arch within a larger arch on the west wall.
Local climate
St Ninians Church, Commercial Street, Leith, Edinburgh sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 970 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 76% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 53% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 43 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 81% of listed buildings. Of these, 25 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 12 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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