St Andrew's Church Of Scotland, Central Avenue, Gretna

St Andrew's Church of Scotland, Central Avenue, Gretna

This is a free-style Church of Scotland building designed by Raymond Unwin with C M Crickmer as site architect, built around 1917. It has an aisled long, low Latin cross plan with shallow transepts, a canted chancel, a square tower positioned in the south re-entrant angle, and a low vestry opposite. The westmost bay is unaisled, with main doors on the west wall flanked by a canted gallery stair turret. Openings are square or round-headed and mostly unmargined. The exterior is harled with brick dressings, arches and chancel pilaster strips; the west door arches are red-tiled. The tower carries a clock on each elevation and features louvred paired round-arched openings to the offset Italianate top stage (other stages are unexpressed), with a pyramidal roof topped by a weathervane. All roofs have projecting eaves covered with concrete tiles, varying in form—facetted, piended or gabled—with the main roof displaying a jerkin-head at the west end.

The interior features mostly painted brickwork; round-arched arcades to the nave and transepts (the north transept is temporarily blocked off); a segmental-vaulted ceiling with ribbed plasterwork; a low octagonal oak pulpit; a raised sanctuary with exposed brick and concrete facing; and blind arcading at the east end.

The church remains in use as a place of worship and forms a significant part of the streetscape of Gretna, the planned munitions workers' town built between 1916 and 1918. The town was designed along Garden City lines by Raymond Unwin to house workers for the nearby cordite munitions factory, which stretched for nine miles along the Solway banks. The church sits prominently on a corner, its white harling and brick margins creating distinctive features. The symmetrical west end, with its round-arched entrance doors and canted central stair tower, is particularly prominent. The tower with its deep-set round-arched windows, the round-ended east apse, and the long low nave with regularly spaced windows are notable decorative elements.

Raymond Unwin (1863–1940) was one of the most important figures in early 20th-century British town planning and is best known for his planning of Letchworth Garden City and Hampstead Garden Suburb. C M Crickmer (1879–1971) was a London-based architect who served as resident architect for Gretna's design and also worked with Unwin at Letchworth and Hampstead Garden Suburb.