Presbytery, St Mary's Chruch, Hozier Street, Coatbridge

Presbytery, St Mary's Church, Hozier Street, Coatbridge

This is a Grade B listed complex comprising a Gothic basilican-plan church with linked presbytery and associated hall, designed by Pugin and Pugin and dated 1896.

The Church

The church is constructed of bull-faced sandstone coursers with sandstone ashlar dressings, a splayed base course, and ashlar band courses. It features a basilican plan with pentice-roofed aisles, their projecting pitched roof confessional sections projecting to the southeast and southwest. The chancel, buttressed and pitched, projects to the north and is linked to the northwest via a small sacristy.

The south elevation, the principal façade, has a pitched-roof masonry porch with a hoodmoulded doorway and timber double-leaf doors, flanked by small traceried windows. Above are three hoodmoulded pointed windows with mouchette tracery, a small hoodmoulded pointed traceried window to the gablehead, and a masonry cross finial at the gable apex. Square-plan buttresses flank the central section. The aisles feature pointed-segmental-arched reticulated windows, terminated by low buttresses. The east elevation is arranged in nine bays (7-2). A moulded doorway with hoodmoulded pointed traceried masonry fanlight stands at the far left. An advanced pitched roof section (confessional aisle) to the penultimate bay on the left has a segmental arched reticulated window flanked by lancets. A two-bay section at the far right comprises a chapel at the end of the penticed aisle and the chancel. Paired two-light clerestory windows are set in moulded panels. The north elevation features a projecting pitched chancel with a central reticulated circular window, framed by small circles and set within a hoodmoulded pointed window. A small hoodmoulded pointed traceried window sits at the gablehead, with masonry cross finials at the nave and chancel gable apexes. Tall hoodmoulded reticulated windows are to the right return of the chancel, flanked by hoodmoulded circular windows to the aisles. The sacristy and presbytery are recessed and linked to the far right. The west elevation is similar to the east.

The church features stained glass to the principal windows to north and south and to the confessional aisles, with diamond panes to secondary windows and boarded timber doors. The pitched roof is covered in grey slates with terracotta ridge tiles, straight stone skews, and gablet skewputts.

Interior of the Church

The interior has a timber-framed entrance porch with diamond-paned coloured glass panels supporting a pierced, carved and panelled upper gallery containing the remains of a large timber pipe organ (pipes and casing to east and west sides only). Six pointed masonry arches with octagonal-plan columns flank the nave. The walls are plastered with colonnetted masonry wall posts bisecting spandrels and rising to roof corbels. The roof is timber-beamed and bracketed with painted and stencilled ceilings to the chancel and east aisle.

Original yellow pine pews remain. A white carved and pierced marble Gothic altar rail with pink and green marble colonnettes flanks the chapels. Two green and white marble pulpits flank the chancel (formerly one whole pulpit, now divided into two) with carved figures set in cusped panels with colonnettes. The Caen limestone altar has a carved panel of the Last Supper, formerly part of the lower section of the reredos. The highly decorative Caen limestone reredos features carved narrative panels, a prominent central pinnacled and columned tabernacle niche, and carved figures of the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph in flanking niches.

An altar to Saint Joseph in the east aisle is of carved white marble with green and pink marble inset panels and pink marble colonnettes. A Lady altar in the west aisle is similar. An octagonal white marble baptismal font has a green and pink columned pedestal. Panelled and carved timber confessionals occupy the shallow recessed aisles to the southeast and southwest, both terminating with reticulated stained glass windows. Stained glass windows depicting various saints and Christ are positioned at the north and south ends of the church.

The Presbytery

The presbytery and sacristy, also designed by Pugin and Pugin and dated 1896, form a two-storey, wide three-bay, irregular-plan structure in plain Tudor-Gothic style. The sacristy is single-storey and linked to the presbytery. Both are constructed of sandstone bull-faced coursers with sandstone ashlar dressings, a base course, and a moulded parapet to the south section. A small pedimented section with a stone crucifix above a wide canted bay appears to the left. Windows are transomed pointed-segmental-arched and two-light transomed and mullioned. The roofs are piended and pitched with straight stone skews to the rear.

The interior contains a timber staircase with turned balusters, original timber panel doors in pointed-segmental-arched openings, and original polished black stone fireplaces to the principal rooms.

The Hall

The hall, dating from the later 19th century (circa 1874), is a single-storey, extensive L-plan structure forming a former chapel and school. It consists of two pitched ranges (north-south and east-west) linked at the northwest corner. The construction is of stugged, squared and snecked sandstone rubble with sandstone ashlar dressings, moulded eaves courses, chamfered and shouldered openings, and a grey slate roof.

The north-south range, used as the hall and possibly a former chapel, comprises nine bays. Gable apex stacks with scrolled detail at the base and straight skews with moulded skewputts face the south (gable) elevation, which has central paired pointed-segmental-arched windows. The interior has been altered to accommodate church hall facilities. The east-west range contains eight bays with an advanced gabled section towards the left of the plan. Bipartite windows (some blocked openings) are on the south wallhead, with a plain elevation to the north wallhead. A square-plan ventilator sits at the east end of the roof.

Boundary Features

The boundaries feature a stepped low coped bull-faced coursed wall with cast-iron railings and octagonal-plan gatepiers fronting the church. Earlier stop-chamfered square-plan gatepiers mark the hall entrance. Coped tooled and coursed rubble walls define the west and north boundaries.