Church Of Our Lady And St Joseph, High Street, Selkirk

The Church of Our Lady and St Joseph was built in 1866, designed by George Goldie, and is a simple gothic hall church. Later additions and alterations were made, including a baptistery designed by K Veitch around 1965. The church is rectangular in plan and has a later baptistery to the northeast. It is constructed of squared and snecked whinstone with droved ashlar dressings, with a rendered baptistery and whinstone rubble with stugged ashlar dressings to the rear and side elevations. Features include flush long and short quoins, chamfered arrises, and pointed-arch windows.

The southeast elevation, facing High Street, is gabled and has ashlar band courses. It includes two windows, a later crucifix situated between them with an ashlar bracket projecting from the collar, and a gabled bellcote with a bell at the apex. A platform-roofed addition is on the outer right, featuring ashlar coping and dressings, a two-leaf panelled door. The southwest elevation has five regularly spaced windows, each with a trefoil head. The northwest elevation is gabled with a single-story, half-piended addition at ground level, a rose window in the gable, two windows in the addition, and a door to the return of the southwest elevation.

The church has leaded windows and a slate roof, with a wallhead coped stack on the left slant of the gable to the northwest. Coped ashlar skews and a cast-iron cruciform finial adorn the gables.

The interior is plain, with timber pews and a boarded floor and ceiling supported by keel-shaped trussing. Stained glass is present in the rose window, depicting the Madonna and Child, and in the windows flanking the altar. A modern timber panelled reredos, a modern timber lectern incorporating a plaster/ashlar trefoil-headed arch on timber columns, and a modern altar with a two-arched ashlar colonnaded base topped with timber are also included. A brass holy sacrament house and four twist-stemmed candleholders flank the altar. Modern timber bas reliefs depicting the Stations of the Cross are present. A statue of Jesus stands within a niche to the northeast, in a space adjacent to the baptistery and formerly a window, and is dedicated to the memory of men of the congregation who died in the First World War (1914-18). A timber crucifix is positioned between windows to the southeast, with an icon below and brass plaques beneath each window commemorating Charlotte Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch (died March 1895), James Robert Hope-Scott of Abbotsford (died April 1873), and Charlotte, his wife (died October 1858), who were benefactors of the mission. A holy water stoop is located to the right of the main door. The baptistery is octagonal, panelled, with a skylight and includes a modern timber bas relief of the Baptism of Christ and the Resurrection. A modern lectern and altar are also within the baptistery. A crucifix above the baptistery altar commemorates Kathleen Veitch, the architect of the baptistery, who died in February 1968.

Roughly squared and snecked whinstone boundary walls feature ashlar coping. Square-plan droved and stugged ashlar gatepiers have a cruciform carved into a roundel and a triangular head. Whinstone rubble walls are situated to the rear.