Parish Church, Whitekirk

This is a 15th-century parish church, situated in Whitekirk, and potentially incorporating an earlier Kirk. A north aisle was added in 1832. The south transept was restored in 1894 by R Rowand Anderson and again between 1914 and 1917 by Robert Lorimer, with further restoration following a fire. The church is constructed of coursed red sandstone, featuring pointed arch windows with Y-tracery. A dominating square tower is a prominent feature.

The south elevation presents a large, crowstepped porch with a wide, hoodmoulded pointed archway, supported by imposts and battered angle buttresses. The buttresses originally held moulded pinnacles, and blind niches are present on the buttresses and in a weathered panel above the archway. The porch has a rib-vaulted interior and a pair of metal-studded doors. Arched nave windows exhibit cusped Y-tracery. To the right of the porch, the south transept is crowstepped, incorporating both ashlar (Anderson, 1894) and coursed stone (Lorimer) with ashlar battered angle buttresses. A trefoiled oculus is located in the gable head, and pairs of square-headed, two-light windows with perpendicular tracery are found on the west return. A buttressed chancel has a three-light traceried window in its south wall.

The north elevation features a window to the nave, to the outer right; a crowstepped, projecting north aisle (1832) is to the left, with a cat slide roof and two-light, square-headed windows similar to those on the south side. A crowstepped gabled transept is to the left, containing tripartite tracery, and a pyramid-capped stair projection with set-offs adjoins the northwest angle of the tower. A crowstepped, cat-slide roof covers the vestry in the eastern re-entrant of the transept, with a pointed arch doorway. A polygonal stack is situated on a raised base at eaves level to the left, and a deep-set chancel light is flanked by battered buttresses.

The east gable is crowstepped with a quatrefoiled oculus. The west gable has a pointed three-light window and coped skews. The crossing tower is three-stage, with dividing string courses and a corbelled parapet. Pointed arch windows with simple Y-tracery are present on all faces in the upper stages, alongside small, mostly blocked, rectangular stair lights. A slate pyramid roof finishes the tower, topped by a wrought-iron cockerel weathervane.

Inside, the whitewashed, aisle-less nave has a timber barrel-vaulted ceiling and parquet flooring. The chancel is rib-vaulted, with a pointed stone barrel vault above and a stone flagged floor. Simple carvings decorate the choir stalls. A pink sandstone communion table, by Lorimer, stands alongside an oak pulpit and lectern. The west window contains stained glass by C E Kempe, dating after 1889; the north aisle displays four lights by Kenneth Parsons (1916), with a trefoiled oculus in the south transept. A decoratively carved wall plaque in the north transept, made of pink sandstone and dating after 1917, is dedicated to the 11th Earl of Haddington.

A rubble retaining wall surrounds the church and graveyard, incorporating a yett pattern timber gate to the south.