Christ Church, Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh

Christ Church, Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh

A cruciform-plan Early English Gothic church designed by Hippolyte Jean Blanc and completed in 1875. The building is constructed in cream sandstone, squared and snecked rubble with ashlar dressings. It features shallow transepts, a five-sided apse with ambulatory, and a prominent north tower set in the re-entrant angle between the apse and transept, crowned with a tall ashlar spire.

The church is characterized by moulded pointed-arch windows, mostly with ashlar mullions and quatre- or cinquefoil plate tracery, decorated with slender shafts and colonnettes bearing stiff-leaf capitals. Other architectural details include a base course, offset gablet-capped buttresses, sloping cills, and a moulded eaves course. The basement level contains rectangular windows with cusped heads and ornamental cast-iron grilles.

The tower rises in three stages with set-back buttresses and an octagonal stair-tower featuring arrowslit windows on its north-west angle. The main entrance porch faces east and comprises a pointed-arch doorway of three orders set in a gabled panel, with shafts bearing annulets in the jambs and a shouldered-arch panelled door. The lintel is decorated with a frieze of blind roundels, while the tympanum features stepped three-light blind arcading and a trefoil oculus in the gable head. A second doorway with shouldered arch leads to the stair-tower to the west, approached by a stone forestair with ashlar balustrade. The second stage of the tower features arrowslit windows. The third stage contains tripartite windows on all sides, each with a central mullioned light of cinquefoil form with pierced spandrels, clustered shafts, and blind outer lights of slender pointed arches; a cill band of blind roundels runs throughout. The top stage comprises an octagonal spire with flying buttresses to ornate ashlar corner pinnacles decorated with niches and blind arcading at their bases and polygonal ashlar caps. Four tall narrow ashlar louvred lucarne windows punctuate the spire, along with two string courses ornamented with blind roundels and gablets.

The west gable of the nave features a pointed-arch entrance door at basement level, flanked by small windows with a bipartite window to the left. Above rises a rose window with foiled tracery, and a small stepped tripartite lancet window in the gable head. A stack with shouldered base and stone finial rises to the right. The nave extends four bays, each side wall pierced by four two-light pointed-arch windows with cinquefoils and pierced spandrels, separated by buttresses. A moulded string course runs across the nave walls, rising to a hoodmould. A gabled porch with stone forestair and ashlar balustrade occupies the westernmost bay of the north side, with a pointed-arch doorway.

The transepts are gabled to north and south, each containing three narrow lancets at ground-floor level with a moulded string course rising as a hoodmould above. The gable head of each transept displays a rose window set in a recessed moulded pointed-arch panel with sloping cill and colonnettes; the south transept bears a crocketted finial.

At the east end stands a five-bay apse, flanked at ground level by a five-bay projecting lean-to ambulatory with gablet-capped flying buttresses and cinquefoil oculi featuring colonnettes and stepped hoodmoulds. The apse comprises five finialled gables, each with a two-light window bearing colonnette mullions and trefoil or cinquefoil geometrical tracery, separated by buttresses topped with pinnacles and gargoyles. The chancel above is similarly treated with three finialled gables displaying cinquefoil-traceried windows, divided by buttresses with pinnacles and gargoyles. At ground level, the chancel is abutted by a three-bay single-storey lean-to vestry with a gabled pointed-arch entrance porch featuring a corbelled gabled ashlar canopy and a bipartite window with trefoil carving above. A tapering shouldered squat stack rises at the wall head.

The roof is steep Scottish slate with a large unbroken expanse and red ridge tiles. The eaves display coped skews, gablet-capped skewputts, moulded gutters, and gutterheads.

The interior of the nave and transepts is painted, while the chancel and apse are finished in ashlar. The aisleless nave is spanned by a timber hammerbeam roof springing from corbelled wall shafts, with arched collar braces pierced with trefoils, carved hammerbeams, and original decorative work to the rafters. A string course rises to a hoodmould above the nave windows. The moulded chancel arch springs from corbelled colonnettes bearing stiff-leaf capitals. The floor is fully tiled, and original timber pews remain in place.

The chancel and apse feature a timber rib-vault supported by vault shafts with stiff-leaf capitals dividing the bays. A stiff-leaf string course runs above the arcade. Two wide arches occupy the westernmost bays, with the organ chamber to the left, followed by two trefoil-headed doors with shafts and heads of plate tracery. The apse comprises a pointed-arch arcade with compound piers bearing rich stiff-leaf capitals and foliage label-stops, with carved diaper work to the spandrels. A clerestory with tall two-light windows rises into the timber rib-vault. The original decorative painting scheme includes arches, corbels, and capitals, with the walls of the western bays displaying painted roundels and figures of saints beneath stencilled arcading and stencilled floral scrolls.

The church features an extensive stained glass scheme by Ballantine depicting the life of Christ in the chancel and nave. The west rose window, representing Christ as teacher, was designed by A E Borthwick and installed in 1926.

Fittings include carved timber choir stalls and a transept screen, as well as a carved timber chancel screen (now relocated) on a marble base, designed by Blanc and executed by Thomas Beveridge. Original furnishings comprise an elaborately carved font and pulpit, both inset with marble balls and decorated with angels. The organ was built by Peter Conacher in 1875, rebuilt by C & F Hamilton in 1902, and again by Ronald L Smith in 1971.

The boundary of the property is defined by low rubble walls with octagonal ashlar gatepiers bearing cusped coping and a band of blind roundels. Cast-iron railings with fleur-de-lis heads complete the boundary treatment.