Barr Parish Church, Stinchar Road, Barr

Barr Parish Church is a rectangular-plan church in the Early English Gothic style, designed and built by Allan Stevenson between 1877 and 1878. It stands at the western end of Barr village in a prominent position at the junction of a road and river.

The church is constructed partly in squared whinstone with other sections of random rubble, featuring freestone dressings. The exterior displays simple lancet windows with pointed arches, hoodmoulds, and skewed buttresses at the angles. A buttressed gabled porch to the southeast contains an arched doorway, small flanking lancet windows, and a stone cross at the apex. There is a gabled vestry on the north elevation. A bellcote was added to the southeast angle by William Tennent in 1898.

The interior contains simple timber boarded dado and a timber boarded gallery to the south gable. A raised gothic-style timber pulpit stands at the centre of the north wall, flanked by doors leading to the vestry. The roof is open arch-braced with tie rods dating to 1891. A vestibule was added below the gallery during restoration work by Anthony Richardson and Partners in 1978.

The churchyard is enclosed by a rubble-built boundary wall with rubble copes. The main entrance features a pair of slender iron gatepiers with an iron gateway and flanking iron railings.

Barr Parish Church replaced an earlier church of 1653, which the Ordnance Survey Name Book of 1855–57 described as simple in construction. The First Edition Ordnance Survey map (surveyed 1856, published 1858) locates that earlier church to the east of the present building. It is possible that some stone from the old church was used in constructing the present building. Ordnance Survey maps from 1856, 1894, and 1930–57 show that the footprint, layout, and boundary wall of the churchyard have not significantly changed. The church remains in a prominent roadside position between Gregg Bridge and Stinchar Bridge and retains intervisibility with the mid-19th-century Gregg Bridge. The site is included within a conservation area.