Stuart Mausoleum, Churchyard, Bolton Parish Church

The Stuart Mausoleum, Churchyard, Bolton Parish Church is a complex of buildings dating primarily to the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The church itself was likely designed by Archibald Elliot around 1809, with James Burn acting as overseeing architect. It is a simple Gothic church with a tower, constructed from rubble sandstone with ashlar dressings from the Abbeymains Quarry. The exterior features a base course, rolled cornice, blocking course, moulded jambs, and stone mullions.

The tower, adjoined to the west end of the nave, is three-stage high with string courses and angle buttresses to the second stage. It has a round arched doorway with a cavetto and roll-moulded surround, a hoodmould, and double doors. Tripartite lancet windows are located in the second stage on the west, north and south faces, while the third stage features louvred round arched tripartite windows on each face and a crenellated parapet between elongated dies bearing crocketted pinnacles.

The nave, with two bays, has hoodmoulded lancets flanking the tower, and Y-traceried pointed arch windows on the north and south elevations and the east gable end. Timber diamond-pane glazing is set in sash and case windows. The roof is covered with grey slates.

The interior is simple, featuring painted plastered walls, a moulded cornice, and a comb ceiling. A central aisle runs through the church, and a gallery with box-pews is located at the west end, accessible by two winding stone staircases. Clustered cast-iron columns support the gallery. Decorative electric lights, designed to resemble gas lamps, are centrally placed. Stained glass windows at the east end depict Martha at the Tomb. The church also contains a simple Gothic pine communion table, pulpit, and organ cases.

The Stuart Mausoleum, constructed around 1800, serves as the burial place for the Stuarts of Eaglescairnie. It is a symmetrical, neo-classical ashlar cube with a dome, featuring base and blocking courses, a moulded cornice, recessed round arched panels on each face, arrow slits on three sides, and a boarded door on the fourth. A low ashlar coped rubble enclosure adjoins the doorway elevation.

A gabled rectangular hearse house, built of rubble with ashlar coped skews, links to the adjoining stables of the former manse, and is set within the graveyard walls to the east. It has carriage doors to the west end and ventilation slits on the sides.

Rubbled and coped retaining walls are also present.

The ecclesiastical building remains in use as a Church of Scotland. A grave-guard is situated in the vestibule at the foot of the tower, accompanied by a panel explaining its purpose following the 1832 Anatomy Act, which aimed to prevent body-snatching. Agnes Burns, the mother of the poet Robert Burns, and two of her children are buried in the churchyard. A bronze commemorative plaque on the retaining walls announces this. The parishes of Yester, Humbie and Bolton have historically been linked together.