St Laurence Parish Church, High Street, Forres

St Laurence Parish Church, High Street, Forres

A large Gothic Revival parish church built in 1904–6 to designs by John Robertson of Inverness. The church is prominently sited in raised open grounds near the west end of High Street.

The building has a rectangular plan form, oriented east to west, with a three-stage tower and stone steeple at the northeast corner. The steeple features angled buttresses, pinnacles, and a louvered bell stage. The nave consists of three bays with the chancel to the west. The entrance is in the east gable, set within a recessed gabled porch beneath a large Decorated Gothic window. Truncated gabled transepts project from the east end, and an additional aisle runs along the north side; both are contained within the overall rectangular footprint. The roofs are slated, with an octagonal fleche on the main ridge.

The exterior is constructed in bull-faced rubble with finely tooled dressings of lighter stone. The walls have a corbeled parapet and shallow buttresses with plain hexagonal pinnacles and cross finials on the gables. Windows are generally small lancets at the lower level, with paired or triple lancets within Gothic arches above.

The large open-plan interior features ornate timber trusses on stone corbels. At the east end is an ogee-fronted timber gallery with Gothic decoration and a glazed timber screen below, enclosing the narthex. The north aisle is divided from the nave by a full-height arcade of stone pillars and contains a second ogee-fronted gallery between the pillars. In 2019–20 the space below the north gallery was glazed between the pillars to form a meeting space.

The west end has a shallow recessed chancel within a large Gothic arch, flanked by two tiers of smaller Gothic arched openings. Below the galleries are the vestry (south) and baptistry (north). The baptistry contains a white marble font by Stewart McGlashan and Co of Edinburgh, a copy of the font at Dryburgh Abbey. In front of the chancel on the south side stands an octagonal Gothic pulpit of Caen stone with red-brown marble columns by Hardman, Powell and Co of Birmingham. The chancel has three blind arches to the rear wall and steps ascending to a marble communion table with green marble columns by Galbraith and Winton of Glasgow. The galleries house the organ by E.H. Lawton of Aberdeen, which extends into the gallery of the north aisle.

The west and east gables contain stained glass windows designed by Percy C Bacon (1860–1935) and installed in 1922. The three-light window in the chancel is a First World War memorial window depicting Christ the Consolator with Courage (left) and Victory (right). Windows in the south elevation and the baptistry are by Douglas Strachan (1875–1950) and date from the 1930s. In the upper level (west to east): The Annunciation with Isaiah and King David; the Nativity; the Ministry of Christ; and (in the transept) the Crucifixion and Resurrection. The lower level lancets show six acts of charity as listed in Matthew 25:25–26. The lower windows in the transept depict St Laurence flanked by St Columba and St Ninian. The baptistry window is entitled 'Suffer the little children to come unto me' (Matthew 19:14).

The church sits in open grounds with retaining boundary walls of rough ashlar with a stone cope. On the south side is a gate screen comprising late 18th-century polished ashlar channelled and corniced piers with ball finials, linked by a curving parapet wall to a secondary pair of piers with spearheaded gates and railings.

Historical background

The church stands on an ancient site of Christian worship predating the first recorded building erected there by King Alexander III around 1275. This was replaced by a plain Georgian church built in 1774–6, shown on the Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1868 and demolished to make way for the present building. The first service was held on 28 February 1906.

St Laurence is notable for its unusually rich interior, informed by the views of Reverend Alexander C Buchannan, minister in Forres from 1899. Buchannan was part of the ritualist liturgical movement in the Church of Scotland at the turn of the century and later became an Episcopalian clergyman. The emphasis on the chancel with its marble steps and altar-like communion table, the saint's dedication, and the elaborate opening ceremony were all controversial among Highland Presbyterians accustomed to simple liturgy focused on preaching.

The windows by Douglas Strachan were gifted by Sir Alexander Grant of Logie, managing director of McVitie's biscuit manufacturers and a native of Forres, and his wife Lady Elizabeth. The Nativity window (1931) and baptistry window (1932) are in memory of their daughter, Mrs Elizabeth Laing. The remaining Strachan windows were commissioned after Grant's death in 1937 by his widow and installed in 1939.

The church was closed for regular services in January 2025. The building is largely unaltered except for the enclosing of the north aisle beneath the gallery in 2019–20. Little remains of the former graveyard and burials, which were cleared during construction of the present church.