Dysart Parish Church, West Port, Dysart

Dysart Parish Church, West Port, Dysart

A cruciform-plan Romanesque church designed by Campbell Douglas & Sellars and completed in 1874. The building sits on steeply falling ground to the south and comprises a 3-bay aisless nave, square section porch to the east, apsidal transepts and chancel, a crossing tower with squat broach spire, and a round stair tower to the southeast.

The exterior is built of squared and snecked dressed rubble with bull-faced dressings. The 2-stage tower features saw-tooth coped battered buttresses, while moulded string courses ornament the porch and tower. Windows are round-headed with stepped architraves and chamfered reveals with stone mullions. Clasping buttresses and nookshafts with cushion and moulded capitals are consistent features.

The principal east elevation presents an advanced gabled porch at centre with steps rising to a deeply moulded doorcase flanked by paired nookshafts with cushion capitals. Above is a deeply moulded pediment with tympanum dated 1874, containing a round-headed niche with flanking nookshafts and roundels. The square-headed 2-leaf boarded timber door has moulded arrises and roundels over its lintel. Windows flank the porch returns, and a 3-stage coped and battered buttress rises to the left. A conical-roofed stair tower with 2 narrow windows projects from the bay immediately to the left. Behind, the nave recesses with a 3-light arcaded window at the second stage and a Celtic-cross finial crowning the gablehead.

The crossing tower rises above the apsidal transepts, with clasping buttresses at its outer angles and 2-light arcaded windows high on the north, south and west faces. Narrow square-headed lights flank the nave ridge to the east. A continuous string course and small parapet give way to the broach spire, which bears tall finialled timber-louvered fleches to each face and a decorative ball-and-spike finial.

The north elevation displays a 2-stage nave with 3 windows at ground level and 2 windows to the right of centre above. A conical-roofed rounded apse with 5 windows projects from the base of the tower to the right. The south elevation mirrors this arrangement but features 5 square-headed windows to a raised basement. The west elevation shows a 5-windowed chancel projection, enveloped at ground level by a modern out-of-character flat-roofed extension.

Windows throughout feature multi-pane leaded and margined lights with stained glass (see below). The roof is covered in grey slates with stone slabs to the stair tower. Ashlar-coped skews and moulded skewputts complete the external finish.

Interior

The crossing is spanned by a quadripartite ribbed vault, with the chancel arch springing from Ionic columns; adjacent corbels give way to arches of the vaulted apsidal transepts. Fixed timber pews with individual umbrella racks line the nave, which features boarded timber dadoes. A steeply raked gallery supported on 2 cast-iron columns overlooks the nave, its panelled front bearing a clock to centre with box pews in front.

The chancel contains a raised pulpit carved with traceried decoration at centre, flanked by a panelled backdrop (altered) adjacent to the pipe organ. The porch is ornamented with a decorative plasterwork cornice and contains a squat cushion-capitalled column at centre of a Caernarvon-arched opening with moulded pediment. A bronze memorial plaque to James Meikle adorns the tympanum. A turnpike stair features barley-twist cast-iron balusters and timber handrail. Marble memorial tablets to 'Lavinia Reddie' and 'Margaret Durie' are positioned within.

Stained glass depicting Biblical scenes ornaments the outer windows of each transept, while modern design fills the north porch window. A round hall occupies the basement level.

Boundary Features

Low ashlar-coped rubble boundary walls bound the site, with square-section step-coped gatepiers supporting ironwork arch, gates and inset railings.