Fairmilehead Church, Frogston Road, Edinburgh

This is a Church of Scotland church built in 1937-38, designed by Leslie Grahame Thomson in the Scottish Arts and Crafts tradition. It has a cruciform plan, with a tower projecting to the south at the west end and a semicircular apse at the east end. The gables have swept eaves. The building uses parabolic and depressed arched openings, with main entrances featuring deep, splayed reveals. It is constructed from slightly rock-faced irregular coursed pink Craigmillar sandstone, with contrasting darker pink rock-faced sandstone dressings.

The west elevation features two semicircular steps leading to a central entrance with a depressed arch and deep reveals. The entrance has a two-leaf timber door with applied metal fretwork motifs representing Christian symbols, above which is a parabolic arched window and an arrowhead opening at the gable apex. The tower, set back to the right, creates an asymmetrical composition.

The three-stage tower has two semicircular steps leading to an entrance with a depressed arch on its south side, featuring a similar timber door with metal fretwork. Single parabolic arched windows are positioned on alternate levels to the east and west sides. The top stage is slightly corbelled out, with a single parabolic arched, louvred dormer window with a curved, coped gable head on each side. It has boldly projecting eaves and a piended ogee roof topped with a lead cross.

The nave has six bays, with the two westernmost bays on the south side occupied by the tower. The remaining bays are divided by short, coped buttresses, and feature single parabolic arched windows, except for the window on the north side, which has an entrance with a depressed arch.

The transepts are each single bay deep, with a parabolic arched window and buttress to the west side, and a parabolic arched window to each gable end. The north transept gable also incorporates a depressed arched entrance to the left; an arrowhead opening sits above. A small extension projects forward from the south transept to the right of the gable end, with a depressed arched entrance and a pair of two-light mullion windows to the west side, and another pair to the east side. The south transept adjoins a late 20th-century brick hall, built to replace a structure from 1959.

The semicircular apse has a central parabolic arched window and incorporates steps leading down to a small cellar below. Multi-pane leaded windows are found throughout the main body of the church, some with pivot-opening sections; stained glass windows are along the south side of the nave and the south transept. The roof is covered in graded grey slate, with a single tall coped wallhead stack to the east side of the north transept.

Inside, the nave is an open-hall with a parabolic arched roof finished with stippled plasterwork, lit by a row of circular lights along the apex. Stained glass windows in the apse and along the south side of the nave date from the 1950s and 1960s and are the work of William Wilson and Abbey Studios. Original fixed elements include a lectern and font, both with decorative plaster panels.