Bain Hall, St Andrew Parish Church, Durie Street, Leven

St Andrew Parish Church, Durie Street, Leven

St Andrew Parish Church is a rectangular-plan gothic church designed by David Henry of St Andrews in 1897 (designed in 1889), with an associated church hall, Bain Hall, by John Hay of Liverpool, completed in 1861. The church is distinguished by a broach spire rising from a four-stage tower and a five-bay nave with aisles beneath a swept roof featuring clerestorey windows.

The external walls are constructed from stugged squared and snecked rubble with ashlar dressings. A raked base course, continuous hoodmoulds forming string courses, and an eaves course run around the building. Two-stage saw-tooth coped buttresses punctuate the elevations, which feature a mix of pointed and Tudor-arched openings. The principal west elevation is notably gabled, with a deeply moulded doorcase displaying floriate capitals and a two-leaf door, flanking small traceried lights. Above this rises a tall lancet window in the first bay, followed by a four-light traceried window with hoodmould and block label-stops in the second stage, which yields to a trefoil in a stone-finalled gablehead.

The tower rises in four stages, with its first stage blank to the west and a door to the north. String courses separate the stages. The second stage features a tall lancet with hoodmould to the west breaking into the third stage, while the north face has a small single light. The third stage carries saw-tooth coping on all elevations and a deep band decorated with three traceried roundels (with external secondary glazing) flanked by buttresses with miniature buttress angle details. The fourth stage features attenuated louvered double lancets on each elevation with tiny roundels above, which break the eaves into gablet dormers that stretch into the broach spire. The spire is marked by double string courses and diminutive gableted openings to alternate faces, topped with a decorative cast-iron Celtic cross finial.

The north elevation is accessed via steps and a ramp leading to a deep-set Tudor-arched doorcase with hoodmould, block label-stops, and deeply chamfered reveals. Above this is a small single light, followed by four large bipartite windows arranged in bays. Four flat-roofed tripartite timber clerestorey windows sit above. A low piended wing projects from the outer right. The south elevation mirrors the north, but lacks the ramp access and features a bipartite window in the lower piended bay to the outer left. The east elevation has a lower piended bay projecting to ground with a rose window at its centre and a trefoil in the gablehead, with a broad stack adjacent.

Windows throughout feature diamond-pattern leaded glazing, with coloured margined glass to the clerestorey windows. The roof is covered in grey slates with decorative terracotta ridge tiles. Coped rubble stacks, ashlar-coped skews, and moulded skewputts complete the exterior. Cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers and fixings run down all elevations.

The interior contains a galleried nave and aisles fitted with fixed timber pews and boarded dadoes. The pulpit, positioned to the east, is panelled and carved with a fine three-stage pipe organ behind it. The organ's arcaded second stage features intricate tracery-effect fretwork carving, and its crested third stage displays a 'rose' motif at its centre, positioned behind a stained glass rose window. The gallery fronts are panelled, supported by stiff-leaf capitalled cast-iron columns beneath a hammerbeam roof with later clerestorey windows. A 1930 stained glass window in the west depicts 'God the Shepherd' and 'the Light of the World' in memory of William Cairns Forrester. The narthex contains memorial tablets to Reverend Adam Forman and Reverend Hugh Elder, and First and Second World War memorial tablets, unveiled in 1921 and 1949 respectively. Tudor arches lead to cantilevered turnpike stairs.

Bain Hall is a three-bay rectangular-plan church hall with a slated gabled roof and a lower gabled porch to the north. It features hoodmoulded Tudor-arched doors and trefoil-headed windows. Large round hoodmoulded gablehead windows with small-pane leaded glazing and cast-iron downpipes and rainwater hoppers complete its design.

The church is bounded by low coped boundary walls with gablet-coped buttresses dividing piers and saddleback-coped rubble boundaries punctuated by pyramidally-coped gatepiers.