St Andrew's Hall, St Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral, 4 Broughton Street, Edinburgh

St Andrew's Hall is part of St Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral, located at 4 Broughton Street, Edinburgh.

The cathedral was designed by James Gillespie Graham in 1813 as a simple perpendicular gothic church with a three-bay by six-bay nave and aisles. It has undergone substantial alterations throughout its history. John Biggar added side aisles and a nave arcade in 1891. Buchanan & Bennett undertook extensive alterations including a three-bay chancel in 1895. Reid and Forbes raised the wallheads and installed a new roof in 1932. Most recently, T Harley Haddow & Partners added a hexagonal baptistery to the southeast in 1976-77.

The principal northeast elevation is faced in polished sandstone ashlar, while the side and rear elevations are finished in stugged squared and snecked sandstone with polished ashlar dressings.

The northeast principal elevation is symmetrical with a two-tier centre bay. A pointed-arched doorway of four orders with a later twentieth-century carved timber infill leads to two-leaf panelled doors, with a decorative hoodmould rising through a string course at the base of a full-height traceried window that rises into a gablehead with a hoodmoulded arch-head. Parapetted skew-copes with cusped arch-heads top blind-arcaded openings, with a carved cross at the apex. Four-tier diagonal buttresses flank the centre bay, breaking the eaves as panelled dies with crocketted pinnacles. Traceried windows sit over a substantial base course in the bays flanking the centre, with a string course, frieze and mutuled cornice below the outer parts of the gablehead. Single-storey aisles flank the principal gable. The north aisle comprises a pointed-arched recess containing a traceried and hoodmoulded window, with a narrow recessed section to the right containing a panelled timber door in a pointed-arch doorway with hoodmould, and a parapet at the eaves with a small blind lancet raised at centre. The south aisle mirrors the north aisle but has no door in the outer left recessed section.

The southeast elevation has its lower portion obscured by a blank wall of the south aisle addition, with a six-bay side elevation of the nave featuring circular clearstorey windows below the eaves in each bay. The chancel is recessed to the outer left. The southwest gable is blank with the chancel projecting at centre. The northwest elevation shows a single-storey six-bay elevation of the north aisle with traceried pointed-arched windows in each bay, obscuring the lower portion of the six-bay north wall of the nave, which rises behind with circular clearstorey windows in each bay. A four-bay addition to the north aisle extends west along Chapel Lane, with traceried windows rising into large stone dormerheads breaking the eaves in each bay.

The chancel has three-bay sides with traceried windows in each bay, hoodmoulds linked by a string course continuous around a canted apse with matching windows to each face.

The baptistery is of simple hexagonal form with panelled effect to the stonework, two-leaf timber doors in the southeast face, and a short link to the south aisle with Dalle de Vere glazing at east and west.

Grey slate roofs cover the building, with a simple pitch to the nave, a piended west end to the chancel, and flat roofs to the north and south aisles. Cast-iron rainwater goods include ogee-profiled gutters to the eaves of the nave and chancel, with decorative hopperheads dated 1932 heading square downpipes with decorative brackets dividing the bays of the south aisle.

The interior features a nave spanning the whole width of the original church, with chancel and aisles running into the nave in Gerona fashion. The nave arcade has paired former clearstorey windows, cylindrical piers and moulded capitals. The roof is supported on painted corbels in the form of stylised giant crowned timber angels, carved by Scott Morton, with wings stretched upwards into broad arches, accompanied by contemporary large brackets for nave and chancel lights. A triple opening in the west gable leads to the chancel with quatrefoil piers and an aisleless chancel. Furnishings include a gabled gothic polished stone baldachino by Reginald Fairlie from 1928, a central altar by R Rowand Anderson from 1876, stalls and throne adapted by Buchanan & Bennett from earlier work, and a pulpit by Reid and Forbes from 1932. Stained glass derives from a Munich studio, except for two windows each of two lights by Hardman.

St Andrew's Hall, dating from 1800 with later alterations, is a two and three-storey seven-bay classical former relief church. The principal southwest elevation is faced in droved ashlar, with random rubble side and rear elevations with ashlar dressings. A base course and eaves cornice frame the elevation, with projecting cills to the windows. Long and short quoins frame the corners of the principal elevation, which features an oculus in the tympanum of an advanced and pedimented three-bay centrepiece. Round-arched doorways are positioned at ground level in each bay, with square stair windows above and round-arched windows below the pediment. The regularly fenestrated outer bays have blind windows, round-arched below the eaves. Four-bay side elevations display large segmental-arched windows in the two-storey eastern bays, with a three-storey western bay featuring a tall window at second floor and two small windows at ground level. The symmetrical rear elevation is partially obscured by a piend-roof vestry wing at ground level, with a segmental-arched window visible in the right bay. Windows at intermediate level occupy the centre bays with round-arched windows above and in the outer bays.

The building is fenestrated with twelve-pane timber sash and case windows, with timber mullions to tripartite side windows. A grey slate piended roof incorporates small square wallhead stacks at the west corners and flanking the centre bay of the east elevation.

A stone-faced terrace with a wide flight of steps faces the entrance doors, lined with wrought-iron railings topped with thistle finials to the stanchions. A portion of nineteenth-century railings on a droved ashlar dwarf wall survives at the east end of Chapel Lane.