Pitlochry West Church, Church Road, Pitlochry

Pitlochry West Church

Built in 1884 by the Dundee architects Charles and Leslie Ower, with an extension added in 1996, this is a distinctive interpretation of Romanesque style. The building is cruciform in plan and aisless, with a squat tower set on a raised site. The walls are constructed from roughly squared and snecked rubble with ashlar dressings, featuring a base course and mutuled eaves cornice. The principal openings are round-headed, with rose windows, continuous hoodmoulds, corbels, and two-stage sawtooth-coped buttresses. Stone mullions and chamfered reveals are used throughout.

The south-east elevation, facing Bonnethill Road, is the principal front. It features an advanced canted bay at the centre with a dominant gabled transept. A low conical-roofed semicircular bay at ground level contains a continuous row of narrow lights set close to the cornice, embellished with nailhead mutules. Above this, a recessed face with diagonal buttresses contains a rose window flanked by squat columns with cushion capitals. The rose window has a dogtooth-moulded head giving way to contrasting voussoirs, with a hoodmould bearing label stops and a mandorla in the gablehead crowned by a cross finial. A canted bay to the right features a hoodmoulded door with a decoratively-astragalled semicircular fanlight in a small pitch-roofed porch with finial; a canted bay to the left contains a single window and outer buttress. The tower stands to the outer left, whilst to the right is a bipartite window with centre and flanking colonnades in a bay with buttress and recessed face of the extension beyond.

The south-west tower is a distinctive feature, comprising three stages on a square plan with broad full-height angle pilasters and a pyramidal roof. It is engaged to the north-east. The first stage on the north-west face displays a stone-cross-finialled pedimented doorcase with flanking cushion-capitalled columns and a carved tympanum to the left, and to the right a small blocked arcaded tripartite opening. The south-west face contains a single window with flanking colonnades, a carved windowhead, and a hoodmould with label stops, with narrow lights set in the outer pilasters. A basement door opens to the south-east. Each face of the second stage has a corbel course and corniced band giving way to an arcaded bipartite window with colonnettes; a tiny roundel decorates the tympanum, and a dogtooth-moulded windowhead is surmounted by an arcaded corbel table. The third stage has a clock face on each side, set in a deeply moulded roundel with a stepped cornice breaking the band course, all surmounted by a mutuled cavetto cornice. Water spouts project from the south and west angles. The slightly setback pyramidal roof is finialled and fitted with a narrow battered stack to the north-west. Attenuated louvered lucarnes with decorative timberwork on the tympanum occupy the remaining faces, and a small polygonal crocketted tower pierces the cornice at the south angle.

The north-west elevation mirrors that to the south-east.

The north-east elevation, facing Church Road, shows a low piend-roofed extension with a window to the centre and paired small flanking lights. These project from the slightly higher original face, which is also piended and retains the original centre doorway with bipartite round-headed fanlight and flanking windows, now largely obscured by the extension.

Throughout, the glazing is mainly geometric coloured leaded work, with clear glass to the rose windows. The roof is covered in grey slates with a fishscale pattern on the tower. The chimneys are coped ashlar with stepped ashlar-coped skews and gablet skewputts. Cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers and decorative cast-iron cross finials complete the external details.

The interior is polygonal in form with a semi-vaulted ceiling supported on later columns. The church contains fixed timber pews, boarded timber dadoes with plain and decorative plasterwork. A moulded chancel arch with plain sounding board flanked by organ pipes leads to a simple panelled pulpit and elders pews. The font is carved and polygonal, mounted on an open base.

Adjacent to the church stands a Celtic Cross memorial to Dr Alexander Duff, the Church of Scotland's first missionary to India. It comprises three stages: a plain base supporting a battered pedestal inscribed with Duff's details, giving way to a reduced stage with vertical consoles flanking a bronze head of Alexander Duff, and finally a finely carved Celtic Cross.