Mure Church, West Road, Irvine

Mure Church, built in 1849, is a Perpendicular Gothic style church located on West Road, Irvine. It is joined to a hall on the northeast side. The church is constructed primarily of ashlar sandstone on its front facade, contrasting with rubble stone sides and rear walls, all featuring ashlar dressings. A base course runs around the building, and chamfered arrises are visible throughout. Lancet windows are a defining architectural feature.

The southwest elevation includes a single-story, flat-roofed rubble porch with a parapet and a stone mullioned tripartite window. Battered ashlar angle buttresses frame the porch, and a door is positioned on the left return, flanked by a small window. The main gable is slightly advanced and framed by corner piers, displaying carved panels above the window heads and octagonal dies. A tall, three-light traceried window sits above the porch, accompanied by a stepped, blind tripartite window in the gablehead. An eaves parapet is topped with substantial ashlar, and a bell cote rises from the gablehead, featuring lancet openings, hood moulds, octagonal corner pinnacles, a squat ashlar spire, a lead dome, and a weathervane. Lancets are also present in the flanking narrow bays.

The southeast elevation presents a four-bay nave, each bay containing a tall lancet window. A recessed, lower vestry block is situated on the outer right, featuring a gabled, painted ashlar entrance with a pointed arch doorway, a cross finial, two-leaf doors, a pointed fanlight, and a four-light timber dormer acting as a cupola. A pointed arch window is positioned to the right of the entrance. The hall adjoins the vestry block.

The northwest elevation mirrors the southeast elevation in design.

The hall is rectangular in plan and has a piend roof. A piend-roofed porch projects from the center of the northwest elevation, featuring battered buttresses and a round-headed door on the return to the northeast. High, narrow lancets break through the eaves within gabled ashlar dormerheads, with paired lancets in the northeast dormers sharing trefoil panels in the gableheads. Single lancets are widely spaced in the outer bays of both the northwest and southeast elevations. A birdcage cupola sits at the center of the ridge, enclosing a ventilator with an ogeed dome and finial.

The nave features coloured glass in horizontal panes and decorative stained glass in the main window, created by David Keir, showcasing geometric patterns and foliage, along with stained glass bordering the front lancets. The hall also has horizontal panes of glass. The roof is covered with grey slates, with a terracotta ridge on the hall. Ashlar coped skews are also present.

Inside the church, the nave is rendered with a compartmentalised flat ceiling and a gallery supported by cast-iron columns, featuring blind arcading on the gallery front. A boarded dado runs along the walls. There are two aisles with fixed pews. A tiered, gothic-detailed pulpit is situated within a shallow apse, accessed by a double stair leading to a gabled chair at the center of a screen. An en suite communion table and chairs are also present. The hall’s interior boasts a deep coombed ceiling with bracketed beams and exposed rafters, along with a window into the vestry featuring tracery and leaded upper panes.

Ashlar gatepiers frame the drive and quadrant walls to West Road, topped with shallow pyramidal caps. Low, coped boundary walls and quadrant walls rise higher with keel-shaped coping. Decorative iron, two-leaf gates and railings, finished with gilded heads, complete the surrounding enclosure.