St Laurence (Martyr) Roman Catholic Church, 215 Kinfauns Drive, Glasgow

St Laurence (Martyr) Roman Catholic Church

A Spanish-style ecclesiastical complex designed by R Fairlie and Partners between 1954 and 1957, comprising a church with attendant chapels and a separate presbytery joined by a link block. The buildings are harled with brick base courses and painted dressings throughout.

The church is arranged in an L-plan, with the main worship space set at right angles to the presbytery and connected by a single-storey link featuring an arcaded loggia. The church body is a substantial composition with a north transept, confessional box, and chapel projections. The south-east gable is dominated by a lower gabled porch containing paired timber doors with curved steps that fill the re-entrant angle formed with the nave. Adjacent to the porch is a canted baptistery of painted brick with a pointed arch window to its centre facet, narrow flanking windows, and a lead roof.

The south-west elevation presents eight bays. The outer left bay is blank, while the bay to the left of centre contains a shallow bowed projection forming a side chapel. The remaining bays are lit by bipartite windows, except for the penultimate bay to the right, which has a projecting chapel with a catslide roof. The presbytery link adjoins at the far left.

The north-east elevation features catslide projections in the bay to the left of centre and penultimate left. A gabled transept projects to the outer right, lit by three narrow lights with an arrowslit ventilator in the gablehead. The north-west return shows three high arrowslit windows.

The north-west elevation contains a gabled apse projecting from the main gable at its centre, lit by arrowslit windows on its returns.

The roof is of brown concrete pantiles with a leaded cupola at the crossing of the transept and a cross finial to the south-east gable. All windows are metal-framed.

The interior of the church is distinguished by bold pointed concrete arch ribs that rise from ground level as A-frames, articulating the nave and supporting a pitched, painted concrete ceiling. A tall pointed chancel arch dominates, echoed behind by a lower pointed arch to the apse. The chancel is vaulted in timber with a cupola above. Shallow segmental arched openings flank the chancel arch, and the strategic distribution of windows creates striking light effects throughout. Walls are of painted brick.

The Lady Chapel is panelled with a canopied niche housing a stone statue of the Virgin Mary. The Chapel to the Saviour contains a similar statue. The altar is executed in polished pink granite ashlar with a polygonal shaft rising to the Tabernacle. A simple wrought-iron lectern stands in the nave. The baptistery is accessed through a pointed archway fitted with pointed wrought-iron gates bearing a gilded fish motif. The baptismal font is a smooth concrete basin with a copper cover.

The presbytery is a rectangular two-storey house with a piend roof, positioned to the south of the link block. Its south-west elevation, facing Dunkenny Place, comprises three bays. The entrance is flanked to the left by a bottle glass screen beneath a porch formed of brick piers and a canopy, with a small window beyond and a window to the right. Three windows occupy the first floor, the central one being narrower than its companions.

The south-east elevation displays a tall stair window off-centre to the right, irregular windows to the outer right, a regular windowed bay to the left, and a projecting chimneybreast with a bold wallhead stack to the left.

The link to the north-east comprises a single-storey service passage with two doors and irregular windows to the north-west, opening via a five-bay round-arched loggia arcade to the south-east. The outer arches of this loggia are infilled with brick plinths.

The presbytery windows are a mixture of small-pane timber sash-and-case windows and later metal-framed casements. The roof is of brown concrete pantiles.

The site is bounded by a harled wall with a round-arched pedestrian gate to the south of the house. Plain iron railings enclose the site perimeter, with brick and stone gatepiers at the entrance on Kinfauns Drive. A brick drive leads to the gatepiers.