Carriden Parish Church, Carriden Brae, Bo'Ness

Carriden Parish Church, built in 1908-09 by P MacGregor Chalmers, is a Romanesque-style church with domestic Baronial details located on Carriden Brae, Bo’Ness. The church features a prominent four-stage square tower to the west and includes an aisled nave, a chancel, an apse, and a session house with a Baronial stair turret to the southeast. The exterior is constructed from squared and snecked bull-faced sandstone with ashlar dressings, featuring a base course to the tower. The fenestration primarily consists of round-headed windows, with predominantly chamfered openings.

The west elevation is symmetrical, with a slightly tapered, advanced tower flanked by the gable of the nave and recessed lower north and south aisles. A round-arched entrance is flanked by a receding group of engaged columns with scalloped capitals and dogtooth ornament, topped with Romanesque carving. The tower stages are separated by string courses, with some machicolation at the eaves course and a pyramidal roof. The north elevation has an off-centre, roll-moulded round-arched entrance porch and a taller, advanced gabled baptistry chapel with tall paired windows. The south elevation features a two-bay gable for the session house with a stair turret to the left, and an advanced, low, five-bay south aisle with a clerestory above. An entrance door is located in the re-entrant angle.

The west entrance features a two-leaf, four-panel timber door with small leaded panes in the upper panels, accompanied by a leaded fanlight. The third and fourth tower stages have paired, roll-moulded windows with raised imposts and a central column. Bipartite windows are set within ashlar round-arched recesses on the west gables of the north and south aisles. Most windows have small leaded panes, some with top hoppers, with the exception of stained glass. The roof is covered with graded grey slates, and a gable end stack rises from the Session House. The exterior and interior are adorned with seemingly random carved scripture panels and crosses.

Inside, a timber and leaded glass screen marks the west entrance. The nave comprises six bays with round-arched arcades, articulated by nook shafts, and supported by circular ashlar columns. A clerestory features an open, barrel-vaulted timber ceiling with stone corbels. A cill course runs along the clerestory, and the capitals are all different. The chancel apse has blind arcading at ground level, stained glass, a corbel table, and rib-vaulting. Capitals at the entrance to the apse depict scenes from the New Testament. The baptistry chapel, located to the northeast, has a recently restored contemporary ceiling painting, accessible through a chevroned arch, and contains a circular stone font. An en suite, square oak pulpit, communion table, and lectern incorporate blind arcading and Romanesque detailing. The pews are of plain timber, and there is good quality ironwork throughout the interior. Various stained glass windows include depictions of St George, Christ (Alpha and Omega), and St James in the chancel apse. St Andrew and St Margaret were created by A C Whalen in approximately 1974. A double window in the north aisle is by G Young, Johnston & Bennet, Glasgow, from 1948, while St Leonard and St Cecilia are by Roland Milton, dating from around 2000.

The church is approached via gabled stone gate piers and a stepped sandstone boundary wall to the west. To the east, a stepped wall of coursed rubble is topped with semicircular coping.