St Ninian's Roman Catholic Church, 206 Knightswood Road, Knightswood Cross

St Ninian's Roman Catholic Church, Knightswood Road

A restrained Gothic church designed by C H Purcell between 1956 and 1959, completed by S Stevenson Jones. The building comprises a nine-bay nave with aisles and an apse.

The exterior is constructed in pink brick with cream sandstone ashlar dressings. A moulded ashlar eaves course runs around the building, with battered coping to the base course. The aisles have flat roofs with parapets. Buttresses dividing the bays of the aisles have pilaster-like forms with battered coping. Windows throughout feature pointed arches with hoodmoulds and geometric tracery.

The south elevation contains the main entrance, marked by paired pointed-arch doorways with deep-set two-leaf timber doors beneath a tall four-light traceried window. An arrow slit opening is set in the gablehead, topped by a cross finial. Single-bay end elevations of the aisles flank this entrance at ground level, each containing a two-light window.

The east elevation extends across nine bays. The outer left aisle bay has a single-light window; the two penultimate left bays contain two-light windows. The three central bays step down to a lower single-storey coped shallow projection containing confessional boxes. To the right, a similarly low vestry projection features flat-roofed openings with single and multi-light windows and deep-set two-leaf doors. Two-light windows light the clerestorey of each bay except the outer left. A battered chimney stack rises in the re-entrant angle at the outer right.

The west elevation features regular fenestration in the aisle bays, except for two bays left of centre which step down to a coped projection with paired single-light pointed-arch windows. The clerestorey maintains regular fenestration.

The canted apse has three-light windows to its flanks, separated by diagonal buttresses. A link to the presbytery connects at ground level on the easternmost flank.

Windows throughout use lead with diamond glazing patterns. The roof is covered in grey slates, with gablet skewputts to the ashlar coped skews of the south gable.

Interior

The interior features a barrel-vaulted painted ceiling with ribs and corbelled posts. The aisles are arcaded with moulded pointed arches springing from chamfered pillars, with flat trabeated ceilings above.

All furnishings were designed by Purcell. Distinctive steel lanterns mounted on timber brackets between the arcade arches light the nave. The main altar comprises a five-part stone reredos with two tiers of cusp-headed panels depicting saints and partly gilded, flanked by a canopied Gothic niche with a quatrefoil carved frieze above and flanking colonnette-margined panels. The altar itself is in Portland stone with three gilded mosaic panels flanked by single and paired colonnettes.

A stone pulpit is carved with cusped panels. Our Saviour's Chapel contains a stone altar with cusped panels and paired colonnettes, flanked by a three-part centrepiece with a statue of Jesus Christ at its centre. The Lady Chapel features a stone altar with cusp-headed colonnette-flanked design and a five-part reredos of traceried panels with polygonal shafts flanking a central statue of Our Lady and Child.

An octagonal panelled stone font occupies the Baptistery, backed by panelled timber wainscot. The organ gallery over the narthex has timber organ cases with billeted coping and a gilt grille.

Church Hall

To the north stands a church hall of cruciform plan running northwest to southeast. Constructed in deep red brick with a harled brick superstructure, it features a tile-coped battering to buttresses. Lean-to aisles to each side have gabled porches or transepts, divided by buttresses with square-headed windows and quasi-hoodmoulds; clerestorey windows above are detailed similarly, with timber insets creating four-centre-arched openings. A gabled vestry adjoins the canted apse at the southeast end.

Stone and metal cross finials crown the northwest gable and apse respectively. An aproned octagonal louvred ventilator with a spirelet roof sits at the centre of the ridge. The roof is covered in purple slates. The interior was not inspected at the time of survey in 1995.