The Hub Festival Centre, 348-350 Castlehill, Edinburgh

The Hub Festival Centre, at 348-350 Castlehill, Edinburgh, is a large gothic former church and meeting hall constructed between 1839 and 1844 by James Gillespie Graham and AWN Pugin, with later additions in 1893 by Hardy and Wight and in 1999 by Benjamin Tindall Architects. It occupies a prominent corner site. The building is constructed of droved ashlar stone with polished dressings, featuring a pierced parapet. Windows are hoodmoulded with quatrefoil tracery and small-pane leaded glazing; buttresses are topped with crocketed pinnacles.

The east elevation is dominated by a projecting entrance tower. It has a crocketed gablet and a hoodmould over a two-leaf clouted timber boarded door with decorative cast-iron hinges, set within a shoulder-arched surround. Cusped gablets with foliate carving are present. Angle buttresses rise to crocketed gablets, and there are tall six-light windows on each face. The tower includes lucarned clock faces, a two-stage, lucarned, louvred belfry, and pinnacled buttresses linked by flyers to a cross-finialled ribbed octagonal spire with diapered bands. Tall, narrow two-light windows are located to the outer left and right.

The north (Castlehill) elevation consists of five bays flanked by gabletted buttresses with crocketed pinnacles. Squat two-light windows illuminate a semi-basement, while tall four-light windows illuminate the main hall above. A two-storey extension is located to the right, featuring cusped two-light windows and a doorway with a gothic fanlight, all set within a pointed-arched, continuously moulded surround under a crocketted gablet.

The south (Johnston Terrace) elevation has five bays to the right and, to the left, a two-bay, three-storey extension. The bays are flanked by gabletted buttresses topped with crocketed pinnacles. Squat two-light windows illuminate the ground floor, while tall four-light windows illuminate the main hall above. The extension’s ground floor has mullioned and transomed windows; the first floor has flat-headed hoodmoulded three-light windows; the second floor and re-entrant angle have pointed-arched hoodmoulded three-light windows. A conical-roofed slated turret is located to the rear of the library extension.

The west (Boswell Court) elevation features a two-light window below a modern extension.

The interior includes a rib-vaulted outer vestibule and a diagonally ribbed plasterwork inner vestibule with staircases rising to either side. A central corridor, originally flanked by offices, leads to an imperial staircase with decorative cast-iron balusters (by Hardy and Wight). The staircase rises to a bowed landing, library and church/assembly hall on the first floor. The main hall has a single-span roof with shallow plaster rib-vaulting, a U-plan gallery supported on cast-iron columns with cusped decoration to the gallery fronts, and a pinnacled and crocketed gothic pulpit, complete with a cusped screen and decorative balustrade.