All Saints Episcopal Church, 28 Brougham Street, Edinburgh

All Saints Episcopal Church, 28 Brougham Street, Edinburgh

Sir Robert Rowand Anderson designed this early gothic church between 1866 and 1897. It occupies a corner site and is aligned east-west, with a rectangular plan anchored by a polygonal apse to the east. The building incorporates bowed chapels, transepts, lean-to aisles, a two-storey lean-to narthex to the west, and a polygonal corner turret topped with a stone spire to the southwest. The walls are built of squared and snecked slightly bull-faced sandstone with ashlar dressings. Windows feature plate tracery, hoodmoulds above pointed arches, and continuous moulded courses mark the cills and eaves.

The west elevation displays a two-storey lean-to narthex with two sets of arcaded round-arched three-light windows, each topped by circular windows set in hoodmoulded pointed-arched surrounds. Three lancets in each bay light the gallery above, linked by hoodmoulds and divided by gabletted buttresses. A rose window with plate tracery fills the gable. The polygonal corner tower, which contains a spiral stair to the gallery, has narrow windows on its west and south faces at the first stage. At the third stage, each facet features hoodmoulded pointed-arched louvred openings. The stone spire rises above with scalloped mouldings and carved label-stops.

On the south elevation, a timber-boarded door forms the entrance to a two-storey vestibule within the lean-to narthex. This door, enriched with decorative cast-iron hinges, sits in a hoodmoulded scalloped round-arched surround flanked by columns with foliate capitals, all sheltered beneath a sloping stone-roofed projection. A circular window with plate tracery sits above. Three paired hoodmoulded lancets separated by buttresses light the lean-to south aisle. At the corner, a buttress and single lancet return to the west, with three lancets flanked by colonnettes in the clerestorey above. The projecting transept to the right has buttressed corners. Its left bay contains a timber-boarded door with decorative cast-iron hinges set in a hoodmoulded trefoil-arched surround with carved label-stops; the gable above holds a two-light window with a circular roseate window in a hoodmoulded pointed-arched surround, the label-stops to the left remaining in block. St Michael's bowed chapel, lit by lancets in the re-entrant angle, abuts this elevation.

The east elevation features a piend-roofed polygonal apse with a wrought-iron finial, punctuated by pointed-arched windows and a small rose window in a pointed-arched surround above St Michael's Chapel. The bowed end of the Lady Chapel, built circa 1897, displays lancets to the northeast.

The north elevation shows lancet windows of the Lady Chapel rising above a low, flat-roofed sacristy. The projecting transept, with buttressed corners, contains a two-light window surmounted by a circular roseate window in a hoodmoulded pointed-arched surround. Three paired hoodmoulded lancet windows separated by buttresses light the lean-to north aisle, with three lancets serving the clerestorey above.

The interior features a wagon-roofed nave lit by clerestorey lancets, with small paired lancets illuminating the north and south aisles. Red sandstone columns support pointed arches—larger ones at the transepts—topped with French stiff-leaf capitals of grey stone. The splay-ended chancel is lit by two large, high lancets (formerly three). Paired pointed-arched openings connect the chancel to St Michael's and Lady's Chapels. The Lady Chapel, apsidal-ended, is entered via a triple-arched Romanesque arcade with capitals left in block. A gothic arcade accommodates the gallery at the west end. The narthex, accessed from the southwest, contains a hoodmoulded trefoil-arched door providing access to the present kitchen. Stairs within the turret ascend to the gallery and choir room.

A tall painted and gilded reredos of 1889 by C. E. Kempe adorns the chancel. St Michael's Chapel holds an altar and painted and gilded altarpiece of 1901 by Hamilton More-Nisbet. The Lady Chapel contains a painted and carved limestone altarpiece by William Burges, circa 1869. High-quality stained glass by William Wailes, C. E. Kempe, Clayton and Bell, and others fills all windows. A hexagonal carved wood pulpit of 17th-century Renaissance style, possibly Spanish, stands within the church.

The roof is graded grey slates. Cast-iron downpipes with decorative hoppers, together with a tall splayed stone stack to the northeast at eaves level capped with a circular can, manage water drainage. Gables are finished with stone skews bearing cross finials. Windows throughout are small-pane leaded lights with stained glass.