Our Lady Of Loretto And St Michael Archangel Roman Catholic Church, Newbigging, Musselburgh

Our Lady of Loretto and St Michael Archangel Roman Catholic Church in Newbigging, Musselburgh, was rebuilt in 1903 by A E Purdie of Canterbury and Archibald MacPherson. The church and the presbytery form two sides of a square that contains a rose garden. The church features a curvilinear Gothic cruciform design with an eastern frontal gable and a lean-to narthex that has low ogee arched doorways on the end elevations. A central semi-octagonal baptistry includes a hexagonal center window, with a gable above that integrates with lateral corner buttresses topped with diagonal pinnacles. There are two 2-light traceried windows with a canopied niche between them and a rose window above. The nave has three 2-light traceried windows before the crossing, while the south transept or chapel features a larger 2-light traceried window facing east, set under a gablet.

The presbytery extends from the transept roof and is a single storey with attics, having a parallel ridge to the rear that extends one bay further south. It includes a splayed porch with a low ogee arched doorway in the re-entrant angle, along with two single and one double light casement windows on the ground floor. There are also two square piended dormers, and the south gable has two windows on the ground and first floors. The roofs are slate ridge roofs and the walls are made of snecked rubble. Inside, the nave features an open scissor roof supported on wall brackets and is aisleless for the first three bays before breaking through a tall arcade into two bay aisles that form the Lady Chapel on the north and the Chapel of the Sacred Heart on the south. The square sanctuary has a timber wagon roof that is bracketed out on a canted frieze. The stained glass was designed by Nina Davidson.