St Fillan's Roman Catholic Church And Presbytery, Ford Road, Crieff

St Fillan's Roman Catholic Church and Presbytery, Ford Road, Crieff

St Fillan's is a plain gothic church designed by Andrew Heiton in 1871, with a presbytery added in 1902, a porch in 1913 (enlarged in 1988), and later extensions. The church is a rectangular-plan aisless building with an apsed end, a 4-bay nave, and a north-west link to the presbytery.

The church is built of squared and snecked rubble with ashlar dressing. It has a raised base course and corbelled eaves course. The windows are lancets, some with trefoil-headed detail, and feature hoodmoulds with label stops. The buttresses are coped and 3-staged.

The south-west entrance elevation has a low harled lean-to porch with a timber-mullioned tripartite window below a timbered gablehead. The inner return has a 2-leaf timber door with decorative ironwork hinges and a decoratively-astragalled round-headed window. The gablehead features four circular openings within a large hoodmoulded circular recess, with a cross-finialled stone bellcote at the apex.

The north-east elevation shows the apsed end with a decorative cast-iron finial and conical roof. A hoodmoulded stone cross is positioned at the centre, flanked by small trefoil-headed windows.

The south-east elevation contains windows to each of the four bays of the nave, separated by dividing buttresses. Below the outer right window is a memorial tablet reading 'THIS WINDOW WAS ERECTED BY HER FAMILY IN MEMORY OF IONE KEITH MURRAY WHO DIED 20TH FEBRUARY 1937'. Two diminutive triangular roof ventilators are present (altered).

The north-west elevation has three windows with dividing buttresses to the centre. The link section includes a shouldered stack and paired elongated circular cans (one retaining a decorative conical cap) breaking the eaves to the left, with a small out-of-character lean-to extension to the right. A roof ventilator is also present.

The windows feature multi-pane leaded glazing patterns and circular panes of toughened glass, with small-glazing to the porch. The roof is covered with graded grey slates. A decorative paired ashlar stack is present, with ashlar-coped skews and moulded skewputts.

The interior contains fixed timber pews and boarded dadoes. A pipe organ in gothic-detailed housing is positioned within the church. The roof is a hammerbeam type. The former sacristy, now in the link section, provides additional seating to the west.

The stained glass windows include coloured, figurative glazing. The sanctuary windows are inscribed 'Sancte Fillan' and 'Ste Joannes Bapt'. A memorial window (see south-east elevation) features the 'Virgin Mary' by R F Milli(gan?), Glasgow. Additional windows include 'Father James Fitzgerald/Golden Jubilee/1940-1980' to the south-east and 'Come Follow Me/Bicentenary/1799-1999' to the north-west.

The link section is single-storey with a raised basement. An oversailing stair leads to a timber door at the left. A trefoil-headed bipartite window is positioned to the right, with a further door at basement level to the outer left.

The presbytery is a 2-storey, 3-bay building with a plain piend roof, built in squared and snecked sandstone. The north-east elevation is symmetrical, with a timber door featuring a plate glass fanlight at ground level, a single window above, and bipartite windows to the flanking bays at each floor. The windows are timber sash and case with plate glass glazing, except to the north-east ground right and first floor. The roof is covered with graded grey slates and includes rooflights. Cavetto-coped ashlar stacks with a full complement of cans breaking the eaves to the south-east and north-west are present, with deeply overhanging eaves.

The boundary walls are constructed of saddleback-coped squared rubble with inset railings. Pyramidally-capped square-section gatepiers flank the entrance. A decorative iron overthrow with an ogee arch declares 'SAINT FILLANS CATHOLIC CHURCH'.