Church Of Scotland, North Church, Strathearn Terrace And Ferntower Road, Crieff

Church of Scotland, North Church

Designed by T L Watson of Glasgow and built in 1884, this First Pointed Gothic Revival church now serves as a church hall. It comprises an aisled 4-bay nave, an entrance apse, and a distinctive 5-stage tower with clasping buttresses and an attenuated spire.

The exterior displays narrow bands of bull-faced ashlar with contrasting rock-faced and polished ashlar dressings. Pointed and shouldered-arch openings are characteristic throughout, with chamfered plinth, string and eaves courses. Hoodmoulds with label stops, raked cills and stone mullions are consistent features. Boarded timber doors feature decorative ironwork hinges.

The entrance elevation (north-facing) presents an apsidal centre bay with a steeply-pitched cross-finialled porch, moulded doorpiece, engaged colonettes and 2-leaf door. To the left are two small lancets, and to the right three tall lancets with colonettes, topped by a conical roof. A slightly lower set-back bay to the right contains a lancet to each stage, small at the first stage and taller above. The tower rises in the re-entrant angle to the left.

The tower itself is highly articulated. Its first stage on the north side features the entrance porch breaking paired string courses into the second stage, with a single pointed-arch window to the east. The second stage displays gunloops flanking a cross finial to the north and two narrow lights to the east. The shallow third stage contains a tripartite gunloop-type opening to the north, west and east. The tall fourth stage has a single gunloop to each face, giving way to a reduced octagonal fifth stage. This stage features alternating large louvered openings and polygonal angle turrets, each with a blank first stage and tiny gunloop to each face at the second stage. The tower is crowned with an attenuated polygonal ashlar finialled roof, with an additional fleche to alternate faces, echoing the spire above.

The east elevation (facing Strathearn Terrace) displays a single-stage 4-bay nave aisle with double lancets to each bay and an attenuated slated ridge ventilator appearing as a spire. A lower bay to the left (vestry entrance) contains a door with two narrow square-headed lights immediately to its right and a rose window above in a recessed face of the nave. A gabled bay at the outer left features double lancets, with the tower rising in the re-entrant angle to the outer right.

The west elevation shows a 4-bay nave aisle with a gabled bay to the right, linked by a further lower bay. A 2-stage gabled bay to the left contains three closely-aligned lancets at the first stage, a double lancet above and a roundel in the gablehead.

The south elevation presents a low 5-bay elevation of the vestry with three shouldered bipartite windows to the centre and right bays, a door with adjacent light to the left and a blank bay to the outer left beneath a shouldered stack breaking the eaves. A tiny pitch-roofed dormer window sits above the penultimate bay to the left, with three diminutive triangular roof ventilators to the right. The gablehead of the church rises behind.

Throughout the building, multi-pane leaded glazing predominates, mostly featuring coloured margins, with stained glass noted below. The roof is finished in grey slates. Coped ashlar stacks with some cans are present, along with ashlar-coped skews with gablet skewputts and cast-iron downpipes with decorative fixings.

The interior retains a serpentine-fronted gallery on cast-iron columns and arcaded aisles. Fixed timber pews in semicircular plan survive with minor alterations. The open-timbered roof is flattened at its apex. A fine panelled timber organ housing by Hilsdon of Glasgow from 1932 stands to the east, featuring a painted roundel above and rose windows to flanking returns. Memorials to both World Wars occupy the north wall. Boarded timber dadoes line the interior.

The stained glass includes a Duncan Memorial Window depicting 'Dorcas and Lydia' by William Pritchard from 1936, gifted by George Logan Duncan of Strathearn Leigh in memory of his wife Bessie Mackay Meikle. Opposite, under the gallery, are three windows by Gordon Webster from 1969 depicting 'St Martin of Tours', 'St Francis of Assisi' and the Celtic 'St Rowan', presented by Muriel Lady Forteviot. Two additional saints, 'Andrew' and 'James', commemorate Reverend James Ferguson.

The boundary walls are of low stepped saddleback-coped rubble, with two pairs of ball-finialled square-section chamfered ashlar gatepiers and 2-leaf decorative ironwork gates.