Walkerburn Parish Church, Galashiels Road, Walkerburn

Walkerburn Parish Church

This church was built in 1875 and subsequently enlarged by Robert Mathison in 1891. It is a five-bay, cruciform-plan building in the vernacular gothic style, constructed in coursed rock-faced whinstone with pale sandstone stugged and vermiculated quoins and dressings featuring polished angle margins and jambs. The high base course has stugged details throughout.

The principal south elevation features a central entrance with three tall arched lights separated by dividing buttresses. A single-storey gabled entrance porch to the left of centre has an architraved surround with two-leaf arched timber doors and a square stone with trefoil detail to the gablehead. A small arched window with coloured margins sits in the right return. The left return adjoins a two-storey semi-octagonal stair tower with a door to the left and segmental-headed arched windows to three sides of the first floor. To the right of centre, a shorter porch with a boarded timber door and a date stone inscribed 1891 marks the 1891 enlargement. Above the nave roof are paired gabled timber dormers with bracketed overhanging eaves and round windows. The right side shows an advanced gable end of the transept with a stepped three-light arched window to centre and a moulded roundel with trefoil detail to the gablehead, surmounted by a stone cross within a round surround.

The west elevation is symmetrical with a high base course and three regularly placed arched windows with drip sills at ground level, with stepped buttresses rising between and flanking three arched lights that formed the former gallery window. This is now a blind round window to the stepped gablehead, surmounted by a shouldered gabled bellcote and plain wrought-iron weather-vane.

The north (rear) elevation shows a gable end of the transept to the left with a stepped three-light arched window to centre and a blind gablehead surmounted by a stone cross within a round surround. There is a single stained glass window to the left of the nave with an advanced single-storey, single-bay anti-room to the right, featuring fenestration to each return. A stack rises at the right. Paired gabled timber dormers with bracketed overhanging eaves and round windows crown the nave roof.

The east elevation is symmetrical, with a later advanced chancel gable to the centre featuring a pair of arched lights, now concealed behind the organ. This adjoins an original higher advanced chancel gable to the rear with single stained glass lights to the flanks and a stone cross within a round surround to the gablehead. The transepts present blind walls to left and right. The chancel contains three arched plain opaque lights with coloured glass margins.

The church contains significant stained glass. Windows by Ballantine and Gardiner include, to the left of the chancel, a memorial to Henry Ballantyne, founder of Walkerburn, erected by his daughter Mary, inscribed "HE THAT SOWETH THE GOOD SEED IS THE SON OF MAN". To the right of the chancel are windows "THE REAPERS ARE THE ANGELS" and "THE GOOD SHEPHERD" in remembrance of Robert Milne Ballantyne (died 1892) from his sister Janet. A window depicting "ST AGNES AND THE LAMB" in memory of Agnes Ballantyne (died 1902) was created by Percy Bacon & Brothers in 1905. The former west gallery contains stained glass memorial windows by Ballantine and Gardiner to David Ballantyne (died 1912) and his wife Isabella Milne (died 1907), comprising three arched lights portraying the Transfiguration with angels to the bottom right and left holding scrolls inscribed "HONOUR THE FATHER" and "MOTHER".

The roof is pitched slate with stone ridge tiles and lead valleys and flashings. Plain stone skews feature moulded putts of varying designs, with cross within roundel finials to the gableheads of the chancel and a small stone stalked finial to the tower. Painted cast-iron rainwater goods are installed throughout. A tall narrow ashlar gablehead stack to the rear anti-room has a single can.

The interior features carved stone corbels supporting scissor brace roof timbers. Three sections of varnished pine pews with side aisles occupy the nave. An octagonal gothic pulpit and a communion table dated circa 1945 are present. A vast stencilled pipe organ by Ingram and Company (Edinburgh), installed in 1896, is housed in the arch of the chancel. A memorial plaque to the Reverend James S Goldie with marble finish and classical pediment appears in the north wall. Stone stairs to the tower have painted wrought-iron balusters and a polished mahogany handrail.

The gallery and west interior were remodelled in 1982.

The boundary comprises a pair of random whinstone rubble walls, one following the main road and the other rising with the hillside drive, both with segmental copestones. Entrance piers have squared stone caps.