Old St Paul's Episcopal Church, Jeffrey Street, Edinburgh

Old St Paul's Episcopal Church, Jeffrey Street, Edinburgh

A Grade B listed building designed by William Hay and George Henderson between 1880 and 1905, with later significant additions and alterations. The church is an Early English Gothic structure built on a narrow, steeply sloping site between Carrubber's Close and North Gray's Close. The design responds cleverly to the challenging topography, with a tall buttressed gable facing Jeffrey Street (containing the chancel above and church hall below) and an advanced gabled block to the right dating from 1924-26, which contains the Calvary Stair and Warriors' Chapel. A 2-stage bellcote sits at the chancel ridge. The main fabric is constructed in squared and snecked yellow sandstone with bull-faced treatment to the sides and rear, polished dressings, and long and short quoins with a base course. The stair block uses squared and snecked grey sandstone. A harled vestry building adjoins to the rear.

The Jeffrey Street elevation features a cross-finialled gable to the left with three short hood-moulded lancets to the ground floor serving the church hall, an interlaced blind arcade rising to chancel floor level, three tall lancets (partially blocked), and a cusped vesica pisces above. To the right stands a cross-finialled advanced gable with two hood-moulded lancets, a string course, and moulded shaped gable. A timber crucifix is attached above the string course. A two-leaf timber boarded door in a hood-moulded double pointed-arched surround with blank shield is positioned in the re-entrant angle, with lancet lighting for the stair above.

The west elevation steps down the steep slope with steps at Carrubber's Close, arranged as three bays over two projecting bays. The south elevation comprises a five-bay gable with access to vestry buildings via a glazed corridor. The east elevation presents seven bays on the stepped slope, with attached vestry buildings and a projecting timbered bay onto North Gray's Close, where plain fenestration sits deep-set in harled walls.

The roof is finished in grey slate with terracotta cresting ridge tiles and stone skews, with cast-iron rainwater goods throughout.

Interior

The church interior is entered via the remarkable segmental-vaulted three-flight Calvary Stair, which leads to a seven-bay nave lit by lancets to the east. The bays are divided by shafts on tall pedestals supporting grotesque beasts, which in turn support the trusses of an open timber roof. An octagonal dark oak pulpit stands at the east wall. Steps lead north to a two-bay chancel. An Art Nouveau wrought-iron rood screen on a polychrome marble base divides the spaces. An organ sits in two arches of the aisle to the east, supported by a pink granite column with shaft ring and stiff leaf capital, with a marble floor beneath. Below the organ pipes are three-bay oak sedilia. The oak choir stalls are carved with poppyheads and griffons, dating to 1891. Three arches beneath a truncated clerestorey with geometric tracery to the west open into Seabury Chapel, a low timber-roofed aisle with three round-headed triple-arched windows. The Warriors' Chapel lies to the northwest, with plain ashlar walls bearing names of the fallen in bronze Roman letters and a compartmental wagon-vaulted oak ceiling.

The Calvary Stair features a della Robbia-style majolica plaque of the Madonna and Child and a white marble crucifixion by Alfred Hardiman, 1926. The nave contains a white stone Madonna and Child by Louis R Deuchars and a white stone baptismal font with a short polished black columnar shaft on a polygonal stepped base, positioned beneath the south gallery.

The chancel contains a neo-Norman timber altar and gilded gothic reredos designed by George Henderson and carved by John Gibson, with figures and angels holding scrolls by Sebastian Zwink of Oberammeragau. The central panel is a copy of Benvenuto da Siena's enthroned Madonna and Child (National Gallery of Scotland). The organ, by Henry Willis and Sons from 1879, was originally in the Cathedral Song School and was installed here in 1888. Seabury Chapel has an oak altar and gilded gothic triptych designed by George Henderson, with a timber crucifix at the tie-beam. A small oak children's chapel lies to the east of the nave, featuring a miniature altar and furniture beneath a coved and quatrefoil pierced ceiling with applied ribs and bosses, dating to 1929.

Stained glass includes lancets in the Calvary Stair at its top; three lancets in the chancel depicting the Crucifixion, St Paul, and St Columba, plus a vesica, by Cox & Sons and Buckley & Co, 1895. Seabury Chapel contains two groups of three windows by Percy Bacon Bros, 1907, and a third group (Annunciation, Nativity, and Presentation) by Karl Parsons, pre-1945. The nave has two plain and five stained lancets.

Later Additions

Seabury Chapel was added by George Henderson between 1904 and 1905. The Warriors' Chapel was designed by Matthew Montgomerie Ochterlony and constructed between 1924 and 1926. The vestry building (Laurie Memorial Building) adjoining to the rear was designed by Shaw-Stewart, Baikie and Perry and built between 1960 and 1962. This building has a harled exterior with dark-stained timber tongue-and-groove panelling and a shuttered concrete and brick internal stair.

Setting

The building is enclosed by a harled boundary wall to the west at Carrubber's Close, which encloses a garden.