St Patrick's Roman Catholic Church And Presbytery, Orangefield, Greenock

St Patrick's Roman Catholic Church and Presbytery, Orangefield, Greenock

Built in 1934–35, this Grade A listed building was designed by architects Gillespie, Kidd and Coia. The complex comprises a church and adjoining presbytery, both constructed with steel frames encased in concrete and finished in red facing brick in Dutch style.

The church is built on a north-south axis on a sloping site that descends from south to north. The north part accommodates halls and rooms below the main structure. The nave features a deep kerb roof on brick-clad internal pillars, with flat-roofed aisles and low brick side walls. The north elevation reflects the roof profile. Church entrance is at first floor level, approached by a perron with a wavy plan. The perron front has a round-headed brick doorway with moulded architrave extending upward as a panel with ragged edges. The door is a two-leaf panelled door flanked by narrow leaded windows. The centre of the perron wall extends to form a parapet with wavy profile, flanked by iron-railed platforms and stairs, with concrete copes to the walls.

Entry to the church proper is through a pair of round-headed doors with linked deeply moulded architraves. Each door is two-leaf with ten panels. Between the doors rises a central sculptural feature: a bas relief panel of St Patrick blessing a child, with a floriated bas relief above linked to brick bands of the architrave, and a tall stylised bas relief standing figure of St Patrick flanked by vertical bands of raised brickwork. Above this figure is a pair of narrow round-headed windows with raised brickwork architraves. A heavy cross finial with bronze face crowns the composition. Stone-coped skews above bands of diagonally-set stretcher bricks complete the design. The sculpture was created by Archibald Dawson, Head of Sculpture at Glasgow School of Art.

The west front of the nave features four tall square-headed dormers with brick faces, copper heads and roofs, and slated sides. Shallow pilasters flank tender-framed plain leaded lights, with dormers set back from the aisle wall-head and flanking skews leading down to pilasters that protrude above it. The centre of the west front has four bays with tripartite windows of tall narrow leaded lights. At the north end is a semicircular flat-roofed bay lit at church and hall level by three tall narrow leaded lights. At the south end an architraved doorway to the church features a two-leaf replacement door, beyond which is a tetrastyle peristyle linking to the presbytery.

The chancel comprises one bay, lower than the nave, with a similar but smaller dormer. The south gable reflects the roof profile and is plain, with a single narrow round-headed window featuring an architrave with brick vertical bands extending to the gable head, a projecting stone lintel, and a moulded stone head extended as a stone band to the gable head. The brickwork matches that on the north gable. Sculptured skewputts in high relief depict angel figures.

The east front has at its south side a flat-roofed porch lit by tall narrow leaded windows. Beyond is a screen wall extending east with a raised head in Art Deco style, featuring a brick sunburst in the head. The main roof is slated.

The interior has a wagon-profile plastered ceiling. Brick-clad pillar arcades flank both sides of the nave. The altar is white marble with a pilastered front and circular mosaic panel inset, set upon green and white marble altar steps with low flanking walls. A baldachin with slender reeded columns and gilded capitals features a round arched head with gabled spandrels and gold and silver dove motif. The altar rail is in an elaborate seventeenth-century style. A low Art Deco pulpit with brick base and light wood superstructure stands to one side. Simple wooden pews fill the nave. Confessionals to left and right of the chancel have round-headed doors of sub-Mackintosh design including tall narrow leaded cross windows.

The presbytery is a two-storey building of U-plan, with brick walls and a piended slated roof slightly bellcast with broad eaves, oriented east-west. It is six bays long with an entrance bay second from the north front. This entrance bay is advanced two storeys, with a round-headed architraved door at ground level approached by a shallow stair. A single window above is set within a vertical band of projecting brickwork with a curved head. An advanced bay to the right of the entrance at ground level has a centre tripartite window flanked by single windows, with brick mullions between them. Ground floor glazing is multi-pane; the first floor window has been replaced by three large pane casements. The south front end has pairs of advanced bays; two tripartite windows are at ground level on the left, and at first floor on both sides. On the right is a doorway to the left of the advanced bay with brick architrave embracing a single-light window. Centre bays contain stairs with deep windows, deeper on the right. Original multi-pane glazing survives except on the first floor left. Five prominent brick chimney stacks feature regular patterns of projecting bricks with concrete copes. At the east end of the presbytery, a single-storey link to the church has strip glazing, obscured from the north by the peristyle. Brick boundary walls to north and south complete the complex, the southern wall having a stone base and brick cope.