Hall, Old Parish Church, Greenhead Road, Cambusnethan

Old Parish Church, Greenhead Road, Cambusnethan

This is an early gothic church designed by Thomas Burns in 1839. It is aligned north to south and follows a T-plan layout, with a prominent 3-stage entrance tower to the principal elevation. The tower features an elongated second stage that terminates in corner pinnacles. The building is constructed from squared and tooled sandstone coursers with ashlar margins. Diagonal buttresses with sawtooth coping support the walls, and all openings feature stopped hoodmoulds with chamfered reveals, geometric tracery, and string courses at cill level.

The principal north elevation is symmetrical with three bays. The central 3-stage engaged entrance tower houses a Tudor arch entrance with double chamfered rolled moulding, behind which stands a panelled timber door. A castellated dividing band with gabled coping separates the first and second stages. The second stage contains an elongated window, with a blind cusped arcade below a trefoliated arcade supported by plain columns. The third stage terminates in a plain entablature and castellated balustrade with raised pyramidal corner pinnacles. Large single windows occupy the flanking bays.

The south rear elevation is symmetrical with five bays. A gabled bay to the centre contains two windows, with blank flanking bays, and single-storey offices abut the ground level.

The east side elevation is asymmetrical with four bays and regular fenestration. An advanced gabled double bay projects to the left, with a door in the far right bay accompanied by a correspondingly truncated window above.

The west side elevation mirrors the east elevation but features stone steps leading to the door.

Throughout the church, windows are fitted with leaded diamond panes. The roof is covered with grey slates, lead flashing, stone coped skews, and finialed gables, with a coped stack to the south gable. Cast-iron rainwater goods complete the external detail.

The interior comprises a plain galleried space with modern fixtures and fittings.

A vestry and sessions house was added during the later 19th century as a single-storey front-facing gabled block adjoined to the rear. It is constructed from squared and snecked sandstone coursers with ashlar margins. The centre features a tripartite segmental-arched window with stone mullions, topped by an oculus in the gablehead, with sawtooth buttresses flanking. To the left, a single-storey communications passage contains two small cusped windows, leading to an adjoining entrance porch. This porch is fronted by a depressed arch door with chamfered reveals and flanking buttresses, surmounted by a finialed gable at its centre.

The vestry and sessions house windows are leaded, with grey slates and lead flashings throughout, and cast-iron rainwater goods. The interior contains plain plastered offices.

The church hall adjoins to the left of the vestry porch. Built in the later 19th century, it is a two-storey rectangular-plan gabled hall. The gable front displays a large Tudor arched window with stone mullions and transomed intersecting tracery, topped by a hoodmould and flanked by buttresses. Four large mullioned and transomed windows occupy the south return. The windows throughout are leaded, and the roof is covered with concrete tiles.

A freestanding war memorial stands within the churchyard as a tripartite arch with a pointed arch to the centre, flanked by blind narrow bays. The central arch features a cavetto moulded reveal and a small nepus gable crowned with a cross finial. Gabled buttresses flank the side bays, with a carved serpent entwined around a spear to the left buttress and a sword beneath a crown to the right. The memorial is topped with a gabled parapet with sawtooth coping.

The principal north elevation of the memorial features a keystone carved with grapes and a cross, and a statue of a knight mounted on a plinth within a lancet arch niche in the nepus gable.

The rear south elevation displays a nepus gable inscribed: "TO THE GLORY OF GOD CAMBUSNETHAN PARISH CHURCH 1914 + WAR MEMORIAL".

The boundary treatment comprises a waist-high squared sandstone wall with piended and jettied coping. Gatepiers with jettied pyramidal caps mark the entrance to the church. Beyond this, a low squared sandstone wall with flat coping stones supports modern cast-iron railings fronting the offices.