Cults Parish Church

Cults Parish Church is a simple rectangular-plan church built in 1793, though it may incorporate fabric from an earlier church on the same site. It features a three-stage square tower centrally placed against the west gable. The building is constructed of rubble (droved and squared on the south wall) with ashlar margins.

The tower has a forestair leading to a door at gallery level. It is lit by a single oculus and topped by a decorative birdcage bellcote, probably re-using a ball-finial. The south elevation has two large round-headed windows in the inner bays, both altered (one fitted with a 1957 leaded glass panel), with doors and gallery windows in the outer bays. The north elevation contains a single central window and a window at each level in the outer bays. Doors are studded with decorative hinges. The building has straight skews and a slate roof.

The interior was partly altered in 1835. It retains an 18th-century panelled octagonal pulpit with a pilastered and pedimented rear screen, and panelled timber box pews. Doors have decorative iron latches. A gallery on three walls is supported on wooden columns with a panelled front and includes a clock presented in 1843. The pulpit is flanked by wall-mounted marble monuments: that to the left commemorates Sir David Wilkie RA, carved by Samuel Joseph in 1844; that to the right commemorates Reverend David Wilkie (father of Sir David) and his wife Isabella Lister, carved by Sir Francis Chantrey RA in 1833.

The rubble-built cemetery walls enclose several interesting tombstones from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. At the west entrance to the churchyard stands a square gatepiers and an early 19th-century rubble-built session house. The session house has a door below a lamp bracket in the south gable, a single window in the west wall with spun glass panels, a single chimneystack, and a pantile roof.

The church forms part of a group with the manse and dovecote (listed separately). It remains in ecclesiastical use and has not been significantly altered since the mid-19th century, retaining its late 18th-century plan form, distinctive stonework features, and much of its original interior fixtures and fittings. A scheme proposed in 1873 to insert Gothic windows was not carried out.