Caretaker's House, Stevenson Memorial Free Church, Belmont Street, Glasgow

Caretaker's House, Stevenson Memorial Free Church, Belmont Street, Glasgow

A Scottish gothic church designed by John James Stevenson between 1898 and 1902. The building comprises a church with a tall two-stage tower and crown spire, a lower church and caretaker's house, and is asymmetrically arranged on steeply falling ground towards the River Kelvin.

The main structure is constructed of red sandstone ashlar, lightly stugged and squared with snecked work, bull-faced to the lower church and crypt. String and band courses run across the elevations, with chamfered arrises to principal openings and architraved surrounds. Windows feature cusped, curvilinear tracery throughout.

The west elevation displays Scottish 15th century gothic character with a crowstepped gable. Access is from a high-level bridge on Belmont Street. A pointed arch doorway at the centre has a roll-moulded door surround with two-leaf panelled doors and an ashlar lintel, with a blind traceried fanlight above. The doorway is flanked by angled nook-shafts with crocketted pinnacles and pointed arch windows of three lights with tracery. Above rises a large six-light pointed arch window with Y-tracery and a cross finial.

The tower is square with diagonal, offset angle buttresses. The tall first stage contains the stair with an entrance to the north aisle via a two-leaf door with carved detail above the lintel on the east-west elevation. Two segmental-arched three-light windows light the stair from the north, with rectangular two- and three-light traceried stair windows above and a small window at eaves level to the west. The upper stage has two pointed arch louvered and traceried openings with deeply chamfered moulded surrounds on each face. A corbelled ashlar parapet features carved animals on the corbel course, below a crocketted ashlar crown spire with pinnacles leading to a substantial decorative offset gothic apex. A lightning conductor is fitted.

The south elevation comprises a five-bay lean-to two-storey aisle including the lower church hall. Three round-arched four-light traceried windows light the hall at the centre, with a pointed arch two-light window to the outer left and two rectangular windows below a round-arched window to the outer right. The aisle above has ashlar masonry with small paired quatrefoil windows to each bay except the outer left, which has a single quatrefoil. Five bays to the clerestorey feature pilasters dividing each bay, with paired pointed arch traceried windows to each bay and a single window to the outer left. A coped crenellated parapet runs along the top.

The north elevation has the tower to the right and three gabled bays to the left. Four windows light the crypt, six irregular rectangular windows light the lower church hall, and paired pointed arch traceried windows light the inner aisle, with crocketted pinnacles to the dividing pilasters breaking the string course to the gabled clerestorey bays above. Each clerestorey bay is topped by a large rose window bearing individual tracery.

The east elevation displays English 14th century gothic style, with a shallow canted apse with crenellated parapet, angle buttresses and pinnacles adjoined to a gabled nave. A blank parapetted bay stands to the right.

The caretaker's house is adjoined to the lower church at the east elevation. It is a harled, asymmetrical two-storey structure with a canted flat-roofed porch to the left of a canted centre bay that breaks the eaves with a tripartite window in the gablehead.

Some lead guttering remains, with leaded glazing throughout. The roof is covered in green slates.

The interior has an irregular plan. The nave features arcaded aisles with polygonal ashlar columns. A two-storey three-bay arcade to the north has elliptical arches with a panelled timber gallery, which continues to the west, while the south aisle has low segmental arches. Walls are whitewashed, with panelled timber soffits to the ceiling flanking a timber vault. The organ is positioned at the east end. The communion table in sycamore and elders' chairs in oak were made by Alfred Lochhead in 1939. Later stained glass windows are by Gordon Webster.