All Souls Episcopal Church, Main Street, Invergowrie, Dundee

All Souls Episcopal Church, Main Street, Invergowrie, Dundee

A Grade A listed building designed by Hippolyte J Blanc and completed in 1891. The font and pulpit were executed by Carnegie and Son of Dundee under the superintendence of James Hutton in 1896.

The church is a cruciform-plan building in the Early English Gothic style, constructed in bull-faced red sandstone with ashlar dressings and topped with a grey-green slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles. It features aisles, a semi-octagonal apse, and a prominent tower with spire at the crossing. A hall adjoins the church to the south-east.

The external detailing is extensive and carefully executed. A cill course and chamfered corbel course define the roofspace, whilst gabletted angle buttresses and coped skews mark the ecclesiastical west end and transepts. The wallhead carries a chamfered course. Windows throughout employ lancets with hoodmoulds and foliate label stops to the aisles, and Y-traceried windows with hoodmoulds and block label stops to the clerestorey. The tower is in two stages, with louvred belfry openings to all elevations flanked by blind panels, angle waterspouts, and an ashlar parapet. Panelled octagonal angle pinnacles with crocketted finials and flying buttresses support an octagonal spire with four lucarnes and a weathervane finial. Cast-iron rainwater goods with rectangular downpipes and decorative hoppers complete the external finish, with steeply pitched roofs and pentice roofs to the aisles.

The west elevation features a prominent entrance porch to the left with a multiple-moulded arch with nook shafts and saddleback coping crowned by a cross finial. The aisle to the right contains four windows with five clerestorey windows above. The transept to the far right displays a geometric traceried window with hoodmould, three stepped ventilator openings, a door to the left return, and a semi-octagonal stairtower to the right re-entrant with a door and three windows. The apse projects further right with a Y-traceried window.

The east elevation shows a similar arrangement with five aisle windows and five clerestorey windows to the right, the transept to the left mirrored from the west elevation with a stack to the left angle, and a single-storey, pyramidal-roofed hall projecting from the left angle with a two-leaf door and fleche. A small modern addition and a window to the apse occupy the far left.

The north elevation displays a base course, a three-light geometric window, and a louvred vesica to the gablehead with a cross finial, together with windows to the aisles. The south elevation centres on the apse with a facetted roof, with the church hall to the right connected by a lower linking bay.

The interior is of exceptional quality. Lightly tooled ashlar walls enclose a five-bay nave with quatrefoil piers supporting multiple-moulded Gothic arches. The roof is a hammerbeam structure with braces rising from long wall shafts adorned with variously sculpted corbels. Clustered piers mark the crossing. A stone bowl and stem font stands within the church, while the chancel contains a marble altar with inlaid floral decoration and a marble trefoil-headed reredos with a large crucifix flanked by figures in niches. A trefoil-headed piscina and sedilia sit nearby. Oak choirstalls with poppyhead finials line the choir, whilst timber transeptual screens with iron grilles to the upper part and carved intrados and parapet enclose the transepts.

The Lady chapel features an altar with sculpted vine decoration and a polished Peterhead granite panel, together with a mosaic reredos and cross and a figure in niche above. Its piscina displays a large sculpted cill panel depicting a lamb. Border glazed windows light the chapel, and a timber rib-vaulted ceiling with boarded panels crowns the interior. A two-manual and pedal organ by John R Miller of Dundee occupies the north transept, housed within a fan-vaulted organ case.

The entrance to the property is marked by four ashlar and bull-faced gatepiers with pyramidal caps and quadrants, with a rubble boundary wall with rounded coping to the north and east.