St Agnes Roman Catholic Church, 694 Balmore Road, Glasgow

St Agnes Roman Catholic Church, 694 Balmore Road, Glasgow

A large Gothic church designed by Pugin and Pugin and built by John Devlin and Son between 1893 and 1894, with interior decoration completed in 1913. The church is constructed of red sandstone with a bull-faced finish and ashlar dressings. It has a rectangular plan with lean-to aisles leading to a 5-sided apse. The building features a base course, set-off buttresses, and a moulded eaves course. All window mullions are ashlar with cusped tracery and chamfered reveals.

The west elevation presents a gable to the nave, flanked by angle buttresses. At the centre is a narrow window with quatrefoil tracery, below which sit two pointed arch entrances set within bold gabled and advanced panels. These entrances have deep-set doors with moulded surrounds and hoodmoulds, approached by two short flights of steps. Above the entrances is a large 5-light pointed window with hoodmould and curvilinear tracery. A 3-light round-arched window at the apex steps up in quatrefoil at its centre. An ashlar cross finial crowns the gable.

The east elevation features a 5-sided, full-height buttressed apse with hoodmoulded 2-light traceried lancets in the upper portion of each bay. A decorative iron cross finial tops the apse.

The south elevation is 7 bays long. A lean-to aisle at ground level is capped with gablet buttresses dividing the bays, with a cill course running beneath 5 segmentally arched cusped 3-light windows to the centre bays and 2 single lights to each outer bay. Above, in the clerestorey, are paired cusped 2-light windows in each bay. A gablet capped buttress divides the nave from the chancel after the penultimate bay. The west return elevation contains a pointed 3-light window, whilst the east return features a quatrefoiled rose window; both are hoodmoulded.

The north elevation mirrors the south in its 7-bay arrangement. The outer bay to the right has a narrow pointed arch doorway with flanking lancets. Two stepped lancets on the west return light a gallery stair. A sacristy projects from the outer left bays, with gabled elevations to the east and west and 4-centred tripartite windows to the north.

The entire roof is covered in grey slates laid to a steeply pitched profile, with decorative clay ridge tiles and ashlar coped skews. Cusped bipartite pointed arch ventilating panels punctuate the base course.

The interior, decorated by Pugin and Pugin in 1913 and executed by McCulloch and Co, displays lavish detail throughout. A pointed arch arcade on polygonal ashlar columns divides the nave from the aisles. The tall chancel arch features a nook shaft with moulded surrounds and archivolt. The rendered walls are painted silver-grey and decorated with gilded quatrefoil stencils bearing emblems in the spandrels. The open roof features ashlar corbelled timber braces dividing the clerestorey bays. A gallery above the west vestibule has a pierced, cusped balustrade. The apse interior contains a stencilled and gilded blue dado with a stencilled frieze and gilded stars to the ceiling. A hoodmoulded and cusped ashlar aumbry is housed within.

Two fine tripartite altars occupy the side chapels, each with marble nook shafts and mosaic panels. The right-hand altar contains a statue of Our Lady in a canopied niche, whilst the left features a statue of Jesus Christ. An outstanding multi-alabaster Gothic pulpit, ornately carved, stands nearby. The altar rail is pierced with colonettes in marble and alabaster, complemented by fine brass gates and a decorative bracket to the sanctuary lamp.

The boundary walls and gatepiers are constructed of chamfered red sandstone ashlar with gablet caps. The base course is bull-faced ashlar beneath wrought-iron railings with decorative panels, all topped with ashlar coping.