St Mary's Roman Catholic Church And Church Hall, High Street, Leslie

St Mary's Roman Catholic Church and Church Hall, High Street, Leslie

A simple Gothic church designed by R Thornton Shiells between 1876 and 1879, originally built as a Free Church. The building is distinguished by a fine tower that masks the south-west corner at ground level. The church comprises a five-bay nave with dividing buttresses, a transeptal stair tower to the east, and a square section porch to the west that links to the adjoining church hall.

The exterior is constructed from squared and snecked whinstone blocks with ashlar dressings. The tower features polished ashlar and a spire, with two-stage saw-tooth coped battered buttresses rising from a chamfered plinth, and a saw-tooth coped batter at the second stage. Windows are characterised by plate tracery with stone mullions and chamfered reveals, topped with hoodmoulds featuring scroll or knot label stops. Doors are boarded with scrollwork wrought-iron hinges.

The south elevation presents a two-stage gable end, with a central door flanked by single pointed lights set within a heavily moulded door frame incorporating paired colonnettes beneath abacus caps. Above this, a hoodmould with scroll labels leads to a fleur-de-lys finialled gablet with knot label stops. The tympanum is decorated with sculpted tree motifs and an inscribed ribbon. A large triple lancet plate-traceried window occupies the upper gable stage, with the centre lancet blinded. The entrance is approached by a straight flight of seven steps with low saddleback walls. To the right, a narrow clasping buttress breaks the eaves, supporting a delicate spirelet with ironwork finial, which mirrors the main spire. A gabled single-stage stair tower to the right features a bipartite pointed window. Beyond the tower, a square-section link porch with a trefoil arched doorcase leads to the church hall, which displays a dominant tripartite window with paired centre lights and single foil. A slender polygonal timber louvred lantern with an attenuated bellcast roof is visible above the east pitch.

The four-stage tower features clasping buttresses and a broach spire. At the first stage, a pointed window sits above a chamfered plinth. The second stage, on the south and west faces, displays saw-tooth coped batter beneath two pointed lights, a single coping row, and a triple lancet with nook-shafts and mullions. At the third stage, another saw-tooth coped batter appears below tall timber louvred paired lancets on each face, with scalloped louvres to the north. These lancets feature nook-shafts, mullions and a corbel table. The fourth clock stage sits above a blank course and single coping row, with a Roman clock face beneath a pointed gablet topped by a fleur-de-lys finial, all set within a moulded frame. The broach spire features fleur-de-lys finialled squinches and lucarnes over clock gablets, narrowing through two string courses below a tall blank course interrupted by a single string course with crockets, and topped by a ball and delicate wrought-iron shaft finial.

The west elevation shows a five-bay nave with two-stage saw-tooth coped dividing buttresses. The outer left window is blinded. The advanced church hall to the outer right has a window on its return face to the north.

The north elevation displays a wide gable end with a low piend-roofed square extension at the centre. The north-east corner is masked by a modern extension. Pointed windows in the flanking bays are both blinded, and a blinded plate traceried triple lancet appears above a shouldered gablehead stack.

The east elevation mirrors the west elevation in its nave bay divisions, with a low paired window to the outer left positioned above a flat-coped whinstone box (possibly a fuel store). A recessed piended extension to the outer right features a boarded door to the left and a small window to the right. The transeptal stair tower at the outer left has a blocked window at ground level and a large pointed window above.

All windows throughout are fitted with four-pane glazing in metal frames with frosted glass. The roof is covered in purple slates with ashlar-coped skews, skewputts and finials. Stacks are of coped ashlar, with an oval stack to the north.

A low saddle-back coped boundary wall of squared and snecked whinstone encloses the property. The entrance is approached by a straight flight of seven steps, also flanked by boundary walls, and is marked by pyramid-capped ashlar gatepiers.