Livingstone Memorial Church, Glasgow Road, Blantyre

Livingstone Memorial Church is a substantial, rectangular-plan church constructed in a Gothic style between 1880 and 1894 by John McKissack and William Gardner Rowan. A church hall was added in 1894, a manse in 1929, and a statue of David Livingstone by Kellock Brown in 1913. The church commemorates David Livingstone, who died in Africa in 1873, and the congregation originally met in domestic premises before a wooden church was erected on the site in 1878. The church subsequently became the Livingstone Memorial United Free Church in 1900, and then the Livingstone Memorial Church in 1929.

The building is constructed of stugged cream sandstone, with ashlar dressings, and a slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles. It features a tower with a spirelet. The front elevation has a two-leaf door with a pointed doorhead, flanked by lancet windows with hoodmoulds. A three-light gallery window sits above, with a quatrefoil motif at the gable and a Celtic cross finial. A stair bay is located to the right, and the tower to the left. The tower comprises five stages, with an octagonal sixth stage, angle buttresses, and a cast-iron statue of David Livingstone within a niche at the second stage, accompanied by an inscription panel below. Bipartite belfry openings and four pedimented clock faces are set into the fourth and fifth stages, respectively, while the sixth stage presents a set-back octagonal drum with trefoil-headed openings and a parapet with obelisks at the angles. The west and east elevations both feature five lancet windows, with the west elevation also incorporating the tower. The north gable includes an advanced organ chamber with a stepped three-light window, masked at ground floor level by a single-storey vestry.

The interior boasts tall cast-iron columns with foliate plaster capitals supporting pointed arches within the aisles. A waggon roof is decorated with stencilled representations of land, sea, and sky. Impressive timber features include an organ screen, pulpit, choir rails, and a communion seat with linen fold panels.

The church hall, a single-storey rectangular structure adjoining the vestry, is constructed of stugged and snecked rubble with a slate roof. A coped rubble boundary wall, two sets of gate piers, and modern iron railings enclose the site. The two-storey manse, situated to the rear of the church, is harled, with a red brick basecourse and a round-headed doorcase. It features a piended slate roof, two canted windows on the ground floor, three windows on the first floor, brick-coped end stacks (cut down on the western elevation), and is currently in use as a manse.