Balbirnie United Free Church, Balbirnie Street, Markinch

The Balbirnie United Free Church, located on Balbirnie Street, Markinch, was designed by Hippolyte J Blanc and built between 1896 and 1898. It was later converted into flats in 1993. This is a Gothic-detailed church with a six-bay nave, incorporating an aisle to the west beneath a swept roof situated between the transept and the porch. A prominent pagoda-style ventilator sits at the ridge, and a single-story hall is attached to the south.

The church is constructed from squared and snecked bull-faced rubble with polished ashlar dressings. The building features single and saw-tooth coped battered buttresses, chamfered coping to the base course, a partial string course, and a block eaves course. Windows have reticulated stone tracery, pointed and square-headed designs, hoodmoulds, and chamfered reveals. Metal window grilles are present on the east and west sides.

The north elevation, facing the street, displays a gable end with a string course below a large, six-light traceried window. This window is set below a hoodmould that extends across the second and third stages of flanking gablet-coped buttresses, terminating in grotesque label stops. Blind tracery is incorporated into the stonework at the gablehead. A single-stage angle buttress is situated to the outer left, and a modern timber door is located to the right beneath a slate canopy. Another single-stage angle buttress displays a carved inscription reading “This memorial stone was laid by JHB Melville Esq (PCM?) 19th Sep. 1896?" Adjacent to this is an adjoining porch with a glazed oculus below the string course.

The west, or entrance, elevation features a large, projecting transept gable on the right with a four-light plate-traceried window below a hoodmould, flanked by two-stage angle buttresses. There are three three-light traceried windows at the centre of the single-story section, some of which originally had tracery removed and are now modern windows. The roof sweeps down from the nave. A smaller projecting entrance gable is on the outer left, with a part-blinded pointed-arch doorway that has been converted into a window on the right, and a small window on the left. A decorative slate-hung ventilator, complete with a weathervane, is situated at the ridge slightly to the right of centre. A lower hall adjoins the outer right, featuring a projecting gable with a window and a depressed arch recess with a doorway (now with a modern door and flanking narrow cusped windows). A carved corbel supports the drip moulding, and the coping is stepped.

The east elevation displays six bays of the nave, each with traceried windows featuring modern glazing, an angled buttress on the outer right, a shouldered stack to the left, and six modern rooflights close to the eaves. A new window is present on the return to the left, while a lower recessed hall is situated further to the left with two bipartite traceried windows and four modern rooflights.

The south elevation presents a lower projecting gable of the hall, featuring a square-headed window with a hoodmould at the centre and a narrow opening at the gablehead.

The north window features frosted glass lights and red-painted timber infill, while modern hardwood windows are found elsewhere. The roof is covered in graded grey slates. Coped ashlar stacks and ashlar coped skews with moulded skewputts are present, along with cast-iron downpipes, decorative hoppers, and decorative cast-iron air vents, including traceried designs on the roof ventilator.

The interior of the church has been largely altered and offers virtually no evidence of its original features, though some decorative stone corbels have been retained.