St Michael's Parish Church, Strathearn Terrace, Crieff

St Michael's Parish Church, Strathearn Terrace, Crieff

This is a First and Second Pointed Gothic church designed by G T Ewing in 1882, featuring a tall attached north-west bell tower. The building comprises a seven-bay aisled nave with dividing buttresses and an apsidal chapel to the east. It is constructed of squared and snecked bull-faced rubble with ashlar dressings.

The external walls are embellished with three-stage sawtooth-coped battered buttresses, pinnacled buttresses, and full-height angle buttresses to the bell tower. A chamfered plinth runs around the base, with moulded string courses and an eaves course. Windows throughout feature plate tracery and dial tracery beneath continuous hoodmoulds, with voussoirs, chamfered reveals, and stone mullions. Doors are of timber with decorative ironwork brackets.

The south-west elevation is symmetrical with a tall gable. A continuous hoodmould spans the first stage above a deeply moulded doorcase at the centre with narrow lights in flanking bays. The second stage contains a tall hoodmoulded full-height triple lancet window with flanking pinnacled buttresses, and a moulded glazed oculus in the cross-finialled gablehead. Low flanking aisles, each with bipartite windows, flank this composition, with the bell tower positioned to the outer left.

The bell tower is a particularly distinctive feature—a nearly free-standing five-stage gabled structure with unusual upper stages. The tall first stage has string courses and a traceried window to the south-west. The second stage shows two narrow lights to each face, followed by a set-back third stage with three similar narrow lights set into a large tripartite frame. A further set-back fourth stage (belfry) displays a bipartite opening surmounted by a small blind five-part arcade to each face. A cornice and angle water spouts lead to the final gabled top stage, which has a blind rose window below a tiny gunloop to each face and is crowned by a diminutive lead spire with cockerel weathervane.

The south-east elevation displays a single-stage nave aisle in four bays to the left with a deep-set door to the outer left and three raised-centre trefoil-headed tripartite windows to the right. A taller M-gable beyond contains two large traceried windows. A recessed clerestory face above has six small dial windows and a tall traceried window to the outer right (bay 7). A lower bay to the outer right, extending beyond the main church, has a trefoil-headed tripartite window. Diminutive triangular ventilators pierce the roof pitch.

The north-east (chancel) elevation features a canted profile with traceried windows set high up to each face and a cross-finialled polygonal roof above. Low flanking bays include, to the left, a boarded timber door with plate glass fanlight linking the church to a projecting apsidal bay with a trefoil-headed tripartite window. A set-back bay to the right has a similar door with an adjacent narrow light to the left and a small bipartite window to the right.

The north-west elevation mirrors the south-east elevation but with a low piended bay to the outer left and the bell tower projecting at the right.

The roof is covered in small grey slates with decorative terracotta ridge tiles. Ashlar-coped skews with mitre and flat skewputts finish the gable ends. Cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers and fixings drain the structure.

The interior contains a small gallery to the south-west. A boarded timber vaulted ceiling covers the narthex, which is accessed via a dog-leg stone staircase and displays memorial tablets including War Memorials. The wide nave features pointed-arch arcaded side aisles with circular columns and uncut capitals. Clerestory windows are set deeply into pointed-arch openings with raked cills and continuous hoodmould. A kingpost barrel roof spans the nave. Boarded timber dadoes and fixed timber pews furnish the interior. The chancel contains an arcaded Communion Table with decorative panelling and a full-width organ, along with a carved white stone pulpit and font, each mounted on a granite base with coloured marble columns.

The church contains fine stained glass, including a St Michael Window to the south-west. A memorial window by M Kemp from 1950, dedicated to the parents of Duncan Kay and Catherine Mason Sinclair, depicts the infant Jesus with Mary and Joseph flanked by scenes from the nativity. Another memorial, to John Dewar, an elder of the church (died 1889), shows elaborately winged angels flanking a haloed figure with a scythe. Two tripartite windows in the Session House feature Mary and the infant Jesus in the centre light flanked by praying children, and children with animals, respectively.

The boundary walls are of stepped ashlar-coped squared rubble. Square section ashlar gatepiers with trefoil-detailed gablet caps support two-leaf decorative ironwork gates. A pair of decorative cast-iron lamps with small-pane glazed lanterns stands at the entrance.