West Parish Church, Main Street, Bellshill

The West Parish Church, located on Main Street in Bellshill, was built in 1878 and is attributed to A MacLure of Glasgow. This rectangular-plan church is of Gothic design and incorporates an aisled layout, a two-stage tower, and a spire. The exterior is constructed from red rubble stone with contrasting ashlar dressings; some plastic repairs are present. The roof is covered in grey slate with cast-iron brattishing, and a cat-slide roof extends along the aisles. The church features a basecourse, a moulded wallhead course, angle buttresses to the front, coped skewputts with bracketed skewputts, a ridge fleche with a conical roof and decorative cast-iron finial, a rear gable stack, and lancet windows with chamfered jambs. Gabletted, louvered apertures decorate the base of the spire, and lucarnes provide lighting.

The front elevation is dominated by a central two-leaf door set within a shouldered-arch doorcase, which includes a quatrefoil fanlight. Above the door is a pointed-arch window with diaper pattern moulding and angle colonettes within an ashlar pedimented doorpiece, topped by a vesica. A window is positioned on the right aisle, and a bipartite window is set into the left side of the tower’s first stage, with another bipartite window on the second stage. The north elevation includes the tower to the right, with a shouldered-arch door and a window above, and a bipartite window on the second stage. Five further windows are visible to the left. The south elevation features a lateral door at the left gable near the tower door, with a window above, and five windows extending to the right. A window is found in each aisle of the north gable, with a lower chancel advanced to the centre and a small addition present.

The church’s interior was not inspected.

Boundary walls constructed from rubble and harled material surround the property, alongside plain iron railings. There are two chamfered pyramidal capped gatepiers and an angle pier at the front.

Bellshill parish was separated from Bothwell parish in 1878, and the church later became Bellshill West following the union of the Church of Scotland with the United Free Church in 1929. The church serves as a conspicuous landmark adjacent to the Western Approach Road to Bellshill centre and is designated a B-listed building, primarily for its prominent spire.