St Magnus' Episcopal Church, 12 Greenfield Place, Lerwick

St Magnus' Episcopal Church, 12 Greenfield Place, Lerwick

This Gothic church was designed by Alexander Ellis of Aberdeen and built between 1862 and 1864. Ellis added the tower in 1891–92, and Alexander Ross carried out alterations to the chancel in 1899. The building comprises a three-bay gabled nave oriented north–south, a single-bay gabled chancel projecting to the north, and a three-stage square-plan tower positioned at the south-west corner. The nave and chancel have stugged rubble walls with stugged and droved dressings, while the tower is of stugged ashlar with similar dressings.

The tower rises in three stages and contains a vestry projecting at its lower stage to the south and east. The south elevation features a mullioned tripartite window with a gablet breaking the eaves above it. Paired windows flank the centre of the tower wall above, and a curved east vestry wall connects to an entrance porch on the right. A gabled single-storey stair tower sits in the re-entrant to the north. The second stage has slit windows with angle buttresses and string courses above. The belfry contains paired pointed-arched openings with a string course at springer level, topped by a crenellated parapet corbelled out at the eaves with stone spouts at the corners. A cap-house roof with crowstepped gables features bracketed skewputts and a crosslet arrowslit in the north gablehead.

The nave's south elevation contains a gabled entrance porch with a pointed-arched vertically-boarded timber door and a pointed-arched window in the side. A circular wheel window with plate tracery is centred in the gablehead above. The three-bay nave elevation has pointed-arched windows in each bay except for the outer bays on the west and east elevations, which contain paired bipartite pointed-arched windows instead.

The chancel is tall and narrow with a gabled form. Its west elevation has a traceried pointed-arched window inserted by Ross in 1899. An organ chamber with a mullioned bipartite window projects from the east elevation. Wheel windows matching those to the south appear in both the north and south chancel gables.

The windows throughout display high-quality glazing. An entrance porch window features leaded lights. Stained glass from 1864 depicting a crucifixion with a dial pattern occupies the north wheel window, with floreate design in the south window. The west chancel window is by Clayton & Bell, dated 1899. Leaded diamond-pane side windows to the nave have coloured border glazing. Some stained glass windows dating to circa 1900 are by Sir Ninian Comper and depict figures. Grey slate roofs cover the nave, chancel and tower, fitted with cast-iron gutters and downpipes featuring decorative hoppers. Ashlar skew copes with carved stone crosses mark the roof apexes.

Internally, two-leaf vertically-boarded timber doors provide the inner entrance. The nave has timber flooring, pews and wainscoting. Open timber roofs feature scissor trusses to the nave and kingposts bearing on stone corbels in the chancel. An octagonal timber pulpit stands on a painted stone base. A pointed-arched chancel arch is supported by pink granite colonettes with floreate capitals on heavy corbels. Stencilled decoration surrounds the north window. The east wall contains a pointed-arched opening to the organ chamber, with arcaded sedilia and a credence niche to the left. A sacrament house in the west wall has a vertically-boarded timber door with decorative cast-iron hinges and escutcheon, fronted by a stone shelf. Stone sanctuary steps, a coloured tiled floor, and an altar supported on three ashlar columns complete the chancel.

Adjacent to the church stands a rectory, a symmetrical single-storey building with an attic storey and gabled form. Rubble walls with stugged and droved dressings characterise the structure. The principal north elevation features a central four-pane timber door with a two-pane fanlight above. Flanking bays contain three-light single-storey corniced canted windows with four-pane timber sash-and-case windows and plate-glass sidelights. The grey modern tile roof is pierced by piend-roofed slate-hung canted timber dormers with four-pane timber sash-and-case windows and plate-glass sidelights. Multi-flue apex stacks with ashlar copes and octagonal cans crown the roof. A piend-roofed single-storey service wing extends to the west.

A random rubble boundary wall encloses the property to the west.