Salisbury Church, Grange Road, Edinburgh

Salisbury Church, built in 1862-63 to a design by Robert Paterson, is a Continental Gothic style church. The building is rectangular in plan and includes a three-stage bell tower set into the southeast corner, with a church hall adjoining to the west. It’s constructed of squared and snecked sandstone with polished ashlar dressings. A coped base course runs along the ground floor, with a string course above. Contrasting polished ashlar and rock-faced dressings highlight the pointed-arched window and doorway surrounds, and wheel windows. Chamfered reveals are found on the bipartite windows, while others have architraved frames. Foliate capitals adorn the nook-shafts and colonnette-mullions.

The east elevation, facing Causewayside, features three bays, with an advanced section to the left, incorporating the tower. Steps lead up to a central, gabled, and buttressed porch. A decorative quatrefoil is set into the gablehead, with a deeply chamfered moulded surround to the pointed-arched doorway. This doorway is fitted with a two-leaf panelled door, framed by nook-shafts and decorative timber infill above. A wheel window is positioned above the porch, piercing the eaves of the steeply-pitched gable. Geometric windows with two lights are present at ground and first floor levels. A boarded door is set within a narrow, pointed-arched doorway to the right of a ground floor window.

The south elevation, facing Grange Road, has six bays, again with an advanced section to the right containing the tower. Two-light geometric windows are visible in all bays at ground level, and smaller windows at gallery level above. A pointed-arched doorway provides access from the church hall through a buttress into the main building, with a boarded door and decorative wrought-iron hinges.

The west elevation is dominated by the church hall, with a three-light, traceried window above.

The tower is in three stages. The first stage has a small bipartite window on the west side and a pointed-arched doorway with a boarded door and decorative wrought-iron hinges on the south side, flanked by coped clasping buttresses and decorative trefoil banding. The second stage has three-light geometric windows on the west and south sides, with nook-shafted angles and a dividing coping. The third stage features chamfered angles corbelled to square just below the eaves, with louvered openings, matching the details of the south elevation windows. A decorative corbel course sits beneath the cornice. The roof is a truncated French design with sweeping eaves (lacking brattishing), fishscale bands, and louvred, gabled, timber lucarnes on each face.

Inside, the church is a rectangular hall with tiered horseshoe galleries and panelled timber balconies with fleuron cornicing along the north, south, and west sides, supported by decorative cast-iron columns. These columns are repeated at gallery level to support pointed arched arcades embellished with fleuron. The roof is segmental-arched, with corbels, timber trusses, and ribs. A decorative timber gothic organ case and a trefoil-section timber pulpit are incorporated. The walls are finished with painted plaster, adorned with foliate capitals and corbels. Ornate circular ventilators (lacking burners) and a clock are also present.

The roof is covered in grey slate with steeply pitched gables to the east and north, featuring gabletted skewputts and moulded eaves guttering. Decorative cast-iron brackets support parts of the guttering. Slab coping is used for the west and porch gables, with two conical, coped roof ventilators and a coped, rendered stack to the north gable.

The church hall and offices were not inspected in 1990. A low boundary wall runs along Causewayside, with replacement railings.