Presbytery, St Joseph's R C Church, 42 Wilkie's Lane, Dundee

The property consists of St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church and its presbytery, located at 42-46 Wilkie’s Lane, Dundee, and known locally as “Mount St Joseph”. The church was designed by Alexander Ellis and Robert G Wilson, and built in 1872, opening in 1874, with the presbytery added between 1876 and 1877, also by Ellis and Wilson. The church commenced as an offshoot from St Andrew's in 1857, initially housed in a weaving shed, and became a separate parish in 1868.

The church is of simple cruciform plan and constructed from coursed rubble stone, in an early Gothic style. The south gable has a crow-stepped and finialled design, featuring paired lancet windows, a vesica, and an iron cross finial. The east elevation features a gable over the entrance with two wooden doors, wrought-iron hinges, and a trumeau with a small triple lancet within a tympanum. Above the doors are three lancets, the central one forming a niche for a statue of St Joseph. Large triple lancets are present in the nave. A small porch with a steep slated roof sits in the angle of the transept. The large transept gable has triple lancets flanked by single lancets, with pinnacled kneelers and crowsteps. The three-sided gabled sanctuary has two two-light plate traceried windows under gablets. A central rose window was removed to make way for a baldacchino.

The church interior was radically altered between 1981 and 1983, although an open timber roof, stained glass windows, an 1889 organ, and a spectacular baldacchino and reredos by Pugin and Pugin (designed in 1900) over the alabaster High Altar remain. Stencilling that was once present has been lost. The church is currently in use as an ecclesiastical building.

The presbytery, located to the north of the church, is a two-storey building with a basement and attic, also constructed from coursed rubble stone. It has a basement and attic and an off-centre pointed arched entrance with a hood-mould. The fenestration is varied, including a shouldered tripartite window on the first floor with leaded glass, and a central bipartite window under a relieving arch. A prominent central wallhead stack features crowsteps, a small hood-moulded lancet, and an incised cross between two gabled dormers. There are also two gable end stacks, capped by a slate roof. Original cast-iron railings are set on a stone wall, with stone gatepiers surmounted by gas lamps.

Next to the presbytery is a former convent which has been adapted from a circa 1830s weaving factory manager’s house. It has an asymmetrical east elevation, a later concrete porch added by the presbytery, and a wall-head stack rebuilt in brick. The north elevation has only two bays of the first and second floors projecting behind the school building. It has a piended slate roof.