St Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, Castlehill, Dundee

St Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, Castlehill, Dundee

Sir George Gilbert Scott designed this Gothic Revival cathedral in 1853. It is a cruciform-plan church built in stugged and snecked sandstone rubble with cream ashlar dressings and a grey slate roof. The building features a canted apse, lateral-gabled aisles, and a spired entrance tower at the ecclesiastical west end.

The cathedral displays characteristic Gothic detailing throughout. Pointed windows with geometric tracery and hoodmoulds are graded by location: 2-light windows to the apse and chancel, 3-light to the lateral gables, and 4-light to the transepts. The aisles have ashlar-coped parapets with sawtooth-coped skews, and cross-finials crown the apse and transepts, with a weathercock finial to the spire.

The entrance tower comprises four stages with a vice and cap-house at the north-east angle. The ecclesiastical west elevation features a multiple-moulded pointed arch doorpiece in a pedimented panel with nook shafts, flanked by buttresses that terminate with baldacchinos at the second stage. The second stage has a 2-light window at centre with two small windows above. Between the second and third stages runs a corbelled pierced-parapet walk with gargoyles at the angles and wallhead. The third and fourth stages contain paired louvred apertures in recessed panels, repeating on the south and west elevations. The set-back octagonal stone spire has baldacchinos at the angles and gabled dormers and lucarnes.

The east elevation shows four aisle gables with windows and a transept gable to the left with a window at the left return. A lower pentice-roofed chapel (organ chamber) occupies the left re-entrant with the chancel window above and to the left. The south (ecclesiastical east) elevation displays the canted apse with buttresses and windows at the centre, flanked by recessed pentice-roofed chapels.

The interior contains an ashlar entrance porch with a rib-vaulted ceiling and paired pointed trefoil-headed doors to the nave, with a single door to the vice. The nave has ashlar cluster columns supporting moulded pointed arches, painted plaster walls, and a timber collar brace roof. The chancel features ashlar rib vaulting.

The altar is marble with a cluster columned crocketted pediment flanked by finials. The reredos is a mosaic by Salviati of Venice. Paired marble piscinae and marble sedilia with colonettes and pedimented canopies are present. A marble tomb of Bishop Forbes contains a supine figure beneath a pedimented canopy. The pulpit has a decoratively carved timber sounding board. The ashlar font incorporates parts of a font from Lindores Abbey, Fife.

The Lady chapel has a marble dado. Its altar and reredos were relocated here from the former St Paul's Chapel in Castle Street (also listed). St Roque's chapel contains an altar and reredos brought here from the former St Roque's Church, Jackscroft. A 3-manual organ by Hill and Son of London was installed in 1865.

Stained glass windows are by Hardman of Birmingham, Scott and Draper of Carlisle, and Gibbs of London. An armoury incorporates carved panels originating from Lindores Abbey. Various memorials are displayed, including a plaque commemorating Patrick Chalmers and his father James Chalmers, a stationer of Castle Street who invented the adhesive postage stamp.

A flight of steps with coped flanking walls leads to the main entrance. A coped rubble boundary wall adjoins a similar wall to Castle Hill House at the east. A plaque on this wall records the site of Dundee Castle and events connected with William Wallace, the Chevalier de St George, and Admiral Duncan.