St David's Church, Eskbank Road, Dalkeith

St David's Church stands on Eskbank Road in Dalkeith. Designed by Joseph Aloysius Hansom and built in 1853–54, it is an Early English Gothic church constructed in cream sandstone, squared and snecked rubble with ashlar dressings. The building comprises a nave with side aisles, a chancel, and chapels, later linked to additional structures including a modern presbytery.

The exterior displays characteristic Gothic detailing. A base course and coped set-off buttresses articulate the walls. Principal openings feature chamfered reveals and hoodmoulds with block label stops. Windows are predominantly pointed-arched with plate tracery, many in two-light cradling oculus form, with diamond-pane leaded glass. The steeply pitched grey slate roof features fish-scale bands and decorative ridge tiles to the nave. Bracketed coped skews with gablets and stone cross finials complete the roofline. A gabled bellcote at the crossing contains a bell by Gabrial dated 1855, with a cross finial and cusped opening. Some original rainwater goods survive.

The west entrance elevation presents steps with modern wrought-iron railings and a low stone retaining wall. At the centre stands a moulded pointed-arched doorway with carved label stops and two-leaf boarded doors fitted with scrolled wrought-iron brackets. A large window above is surmounted by a vesica in the gablehead. Lean-to aisles flank this elevation, each with a window flanked by buttresses. A recessed gabled side chapel to the right displays a quatrefoiled two-light geometric window.

The north elevation facing Eskbank Road is four bays wide, with two-leaf boarded doors in the bay to the right of centre and fenestration in the remaining bays. Quatrefoil clerestory windows punctuate the upper wall. A rectangular projection housing a monument projects at the far left, topped by ashlar half-piend coping and surmounted by an oculus.

The east elevation shows the chancel at centre with a gabled Lady Chapel recessed to the right at the end of the north aisle. A gabled sacristy abuts the chancel at right angles, sharing a common eaves line with the nave. A string course runs below window level. The chancel features a tall three-light window with geometric tracery comprising two quatrefoils and one trefoil. A window on the south return is partly intercepted by the sacristy.

The Lady Chapel displays a two-light geometric traceried window with trefoil on its east elevation, a plate-traceried window to the north, and a quatrefoiled oculus to the west gablehead. The sacristy is two bays, with a common eaves line shared with the nave. Paired and cusped lancets occupy the ground storey, with cusped half-vesicas to the clerestory. A window in the south gable is intercepted by the skew line of a single-storey linking block leading to the presbytery. A rendered gablehead stack projects to the south.

The south elevation displays clerestory windows to the nave. A three-bay side aisle is adjoined to the left, fitted with plate-traceried windows. St Aloysius' Chapel is a taller gabled block adjoined to the fourth bay, with a steeper pitched roof. Two pointed-arched windows in its south wall overlook an intermediate porch.

Single-storey linking buildings connect the sacristy to a modern two-storey presbytery of 1969, with modern blockwork abutting at right angles to the west.

The interior is light and spacious with white and cream painted walls and open timber roofs. The nave roof features carved stone corbels, whilst aisle roofs display timber trusses. Four-centred embrasures punctuate the walls. The nave comprises five bays with pointed arches supported on alternating round and octagonal ashlar piers, both pairs of eastern arches springing from impost corbels. Two side chapels are separated from the south aisle by a six-bay diminutive arcade.

An organ gallery occupies the west end. The organ was designed by Dr Monk of York Minster and built by Hamilton of Edinburgh in 1864. Its gallery features arcaded panelling with three bays of slender-columned pointed arches.

A pieta in the monument recess in the north-east wall was created by Mayer of Munich. Stations of the Cross brought from Paris by Lady Lothian in 1854 are displayed.

The chancel is distinguished by a pointed chancel arch, marble wainscot and floor. The high altar is constructed from Caen stone with marble insets and three quatrefoil reliefs depicting Our Lady, St Margaret and St David, designed by Mr Henderson and carved by Earp and John Drummond. Modern elements include a marble lectern, communion table and chair by Cullen. A richly stencilled coffered vaulted ceiling, executed by C H Goldie in the 1890s, rises above. A mural depicting the Coronation of the Virgin by Miss Gibsone appears above the chancel arch of the nave.

The Lady Chapel was decorated by C H Goldie in the 1890s with a vaulted, ornately coffered and gilded ceiling with decorative bosses. Its altar comprises a five-bay arcaded reredos with marble colonnettes, statues of saints, and a Virgin and Child in a gothic canopied niche enclosing a relic of St Vitale. A glazed tile dado runs below.

St Aloysius' Chapel features a rib-vaulted altar surmounted by a statue of St Aloysius in an ornate canopied niche by Pollen. A confessional is set into the south wall, surmounted by a three-bay arcade with lancets in the outer bays and a statue in the centre blind bay.

The Holy Souls Chapel in the south-west contains an altar by Mayer of Munich, dated 1883, with an altarpiece painting of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour dated 1868.

Stained glass windows throughout the church depict saints, angels, biblical scenes and sacraments, dating from various periods. The chancel window shows Our Lady, St John and St Paul. The Lady Chapel features a window with St Mary and St Joseph by Morris & Co.

Boundary walls are of ashlar saddleback coped rubble, with ashlar gabled gatepiers.