Scoonie Parish Church, Durie Street, Leven

Scoonie Parish Church, Durie Street, Leven

A plain aisled Romanesque church designed by Dr Peter Macgregor Chalmers and completed in 1905. The building incorporates the south-west tower and spire of 1775, designed by William Robertson of Sawmill. The lower stages of the tower were recased, but the octagonal belfry stage and spire remain unaltered. An organ chamber was added to the south in 1883.

The church comprises a continuous 7-bay nave and chancel with flanking gabled aisles. The north aisle is 2-stage; the south aisle features a transeptal organ chamber. A single-storey north-east vestry is attached. The walls are constructed of stugged, squared and snecked rubble with droved ashlar quoins. A string course incorporating hoodmoulds runs across the west elevation, with an eaves course throughout. Tall single-stage, sawtooth-coped buttresses flank the west elevation. The openings feature paired, roll-moulded round-headed doorcases, and roll-moulded round-headed and circular windows (except to the north). All windows incorporate voussoirs, raked cills, and stone mullions with tracery. Boarded timber doors are fitted throughout.

The west entrance elevation displays an advanced centre gable with buttress, flanked by paired doorcases with semicircular fanlights and flanking outer buttresses. Above are paired tall windows with cushion-capitalled nookshafts and concave-moulded heads, with a similarly moulded round-headed window in the cross-finalled gablehead. A slightly recessed transeptal stair tower to the left of centre has a square-headed door with an adjacent small light to its left, now blocked, with a further small light above. A recessed gable to the right contains the tower in the re-entrant angle to its left, with a tall single light immediately to the right.

The south-west tower is two-staged with an octagonal spire. The first stage is tall, with a stone forestair to the south leading to a round-headed, low piended porch in the re-entrant angle to the west. The octagonal second stage has a clock face dipping into the first stage at the south and west, arrowslits to the cardinal faces above, and a cornice giving way to the spire. The spire features concave panels and a decorative cast-iron weathervane.

The north elevation on Victoria Road displays the first stage of the nave with paired narrow lights to bays 2 to 5, and a smaller tripartite window to the outer left, with 5 regularly disposed windows above in the upper storey. A recessed bay to the outer right contains the transeptal stair tower and a single window. A slightly advanced, low piended session house with a small bipartite window projects to the outer left.

The south elevation on Durie Street features a gabled apse with circular window projecting to the centre bay of the nave, 2-light traceried windows in the flanking bays, and further single lights to the outer bays. A low flat-roofed projection sits in the re-entrant angle to the left of the apse.

The east elevation has an advanced cross-finalled gable to the centre with a tall raised centre tripartite window, flanking recessed gabled aisles each with a single tall window, a small piended projection in the re-entrant angle to the left, and an advanced piended session house to the right.

The church is roofed with grey slates. Ashlar-coped skews with gablet skewputts and cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers complete the external finish. Stained glass windows with multi-paned leaded glazing are fitted to the first stage on the north elevation.

The interior comprises an arcaded and galleried nave with cushion-capitalled ashlar columns and hammerbeam roofs springing from stone corbels to the nave, with kingpost-trusses to the aisles. Fixed timber pews with boarded dadoes and panelled gallery fronts to the north and west are fitted throughout. The raised chancel contains fixed choir stalls, a pulpit to the south, and an arcaded Communion Table, all dating from 1904, together with a red granite Baptismal Font. Oak panelling dates from 1924. A side chapel contains a table and two chairs made from wood salvaged from the Old Kirk.

An August Gern pipe organ of 1884, restored around 1990, is installed in the organ chamber. The narthex contains classical mural monuments to former ministers and a cantilevered winding stone stair with decorative cast-iron balusters to the north.

The stained glass windows are of considerable interest. The chancel windows by Percy Bacon and Brothers date from 1904 and depict 'Christ in Majesty' flanked by 'Saints Peter and Paul'. The north aisle windows by Cottier & Co date from around 1910 and depict 'Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James and Dorcas', Holman Hunt's 'Light of the World', and 'Behold, I send you forth' from 1934. The south aisle contains a Second World War Memorial window by W Wilson from 1951, a Wallace memorial window from after 1930, and a traceried First World War Memorial window by J Henry Dearle of Morris & Co from 1925, depicting Christ receiving a soldier into Paradise. A 'Baptismal window' on the east wall of the long gallery depicts 'Mother and Child'.

The boundary walls are of coped rubble construction with pyramidal-coped square-section gatepiers and ironwork gates.