Free Church, James Street, Blairgowrie

Free Church, James Street, Blairgowrie

This Early English Gothic church was designed by the Aberdeen architects D and J R MacMillan and built between 1902 and 1904, with stonework executed by McLeish. The hall dates from 1843.

The building comprises a 3-bay aisled nave with transepts and apse, dominated by a striking 4-stage entrance tower and a single-stage polygonal stair tower. The exterior is constructed of red sandstone bull-faced rubble with polished ashlar dressings; the north-east and north-west elevations feature snecked rubble. The design incorporates raised base and eaves courses with dividing string courses to the entrance tower. Buttresses vary in form—single and 2-stage sawtooth-coped examples, single-stage polygonal clasping buttresses, and full-height set-back buttresses to the tower. Windows throughout feature tracery and trefoil heads, with hoodmoulds, corbels, raked cills, chamfered reveals and stone mullions.

The south-east principal elevation displays a tall gabled form with a traceried 7-light horizontal window at the first stage and a large hoodmoulded traceried window above. A relief-carved cross fills a panel at the gablehead. A gablet-coped buttress breaks the eaves at the outer right before giving way to a low crenellated polygonal tower with set-back polygonal roof. This tower features a hoodmoulded trefoil-headed doorpiece and part-glazed timber door with disabled access. Small horizontal trefoil-headed bipartite windows in square-headed panels sit close to the eaves above and on three adjacent faces to the right, with two outer faces also displaying single windows at the first stage.

The entrance tower presents an engaged first stage with steps leading to pinnacled buttresses flanking a gabled porch on the south-west. The porch incorporates a deeply-moulded decorative doorcase with paired attached colonnettes and a vaulted deep-set 2-leaf panelled timber door with timber-traceried coloured glass toplights. A hoodmould and decorative niche with finial occupy the gablehead, with two narrow lights to the south-east. The tall 2nd stage above features a full-height centre buttress and two glazed gunloops on the south-east, south-west and north-west elevations. The reduced belfry stage displays small blind trefoil-headed panels on each face surmounted by paired hoodmoulded louvered openings, with a corbel table above. The 4th stage accommodates a clock face set into a segmental panel and topped by a triangular pediment with flanking polygonal buttresses on each face. A set-back crocketted octagonal spire with a diminutive fleche at alternate faces crowns the composition.

The south-west elevation on James Street features a broad advanced gabled bay to the left of centre with a tall hoodmoulded 5-light raised-centre window flanked by polygonal buttresses. Three set-back bays to the nave at the right each display two closely-aligned trefoil-headed windows to the aisled first stage and a traceried 3-light window to the set-back 2nd stage, the latter appearing as a continuous string course beneath hoodmoulds.

The north-east elevation mirrors the south-west but without hoodmoulds and with a polygonal tower to the outer left. The north-west elevation presents a gabled bay to the left of centre with a large 5-light window serving a smaller projecting gabled apse, and a lower blank bay to the right.

Throughout, multi-pane leaded glazing incorporates Art Nouveau style coloured toplights. The roof is finished in grey slates with ashlar stacks featuring cans, ashlar-coped skews with moulded skewputts, and stepped terracotta ridge tiles.

The interior contains a fine original galleried design with fixed timber pews and circular ashlar columns supporting segmentally-arched arcades to the side aisles with clerestorey windows. A full-height transeptal arcade and barrel-vaulted ceiling complete the spatial composition. A carved timber screen fronts the raised chancel area, which features a polygonal memorial pulpit inscribed to 'Rev William Muir BD BL Fell asleep Jan 26 1920'. An octagonal stone font with clustered marble shaft commemorates 'Rev John Baxter DD, Minister September 1858 until his death August 1893'. The tall chancel arch frames a Norman & Beard organ of 1907, rebuilt in 1989 by A F Edmondstone.

The narthex contains segmental- and trefoil-headed doors with boarded timber dadoes, various mural monuments including First and Second World War memorials, and a polygonal tower with turned balusters and finialled newel posts supporting a cantilevered staircase. Decorative cast-iron radiators and bracketed light fittings remain in place.

A 5-light apse window depicts scenes from the life of Moses: his birth and discovery in the bulrushes; Moses on Mount Sinai receiving the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments; Israelites plagued by poisonous snakes with Moses holding the bronze healing pole represented as a cross; Moses striking rock on Mount Sinai; and Moses viewing the River Jordan and the Promised Land.

The separate church hall is a gabled rectangular building of rubble construction with a slated roof and horizontally-astragalled timber windows. Its south-east elevation displays a hoodmoulded 3-light pointed-arch window to a gabled left bay and a lower link bay to the right with a segmental-headed 2-leaf part-glazed timber door and flanking basket-arched tripartite windows.

Low saddleback-coped rubble boundary walls with inset ironwork railings and decorative gates enclose the site.