Including Gatepiers And Boundary Walls, Former Bridge Of Strathfillan Parish Church And Manse, Strathfillan House, Tyndrum

Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Planning Authority

Constructed circa 1873, this former church and manse are particularly distinctive. The buildings are attached to each other with mutual access and form an H-plan. The manse is 2-storey and 3-bay and the church is 5 bays. Both in the Gothic style, the buildings have hoodmoulds and the simple buttressed church has mostly pointed arch openings. The manse has a now truncated machiciolated square entrance tower which is particularly unusual for the area. It is also rare to find an attached church and manse within the Church of Scotland architectural tradition. The manse retains some fine interior features.

The principal elevation is the South elevation and to the left is the manse. To the left is an advanced finialed gable with bipartite windows and in the re-entrant angle is the entrance tower with a timber door with a simple rectangular fanlight, above which is a simple bracketed stone canopy. Above is a single light window and the tower is now capped with a very shallow pyramidal roof. To the right is a single bay with a gabled attic window breaking the eaves. Attached to the right at right angles is the church. There is a wallhead stack to the West elevation, gable stacks to the North elevation and a ridge stack on the South elevation.

The (South) entrance gable of the church consists of a central advanced coursed sandstone pitched porch with a Celtic cross at the apex. There is a recessed 2-leaf timber boarded door with good ironwork. Above is an oculus window and the gable is topped by pitched roof stone bellcote. The entrance porch is flanked by a pair of narrow pointed arch windows. The house and the church have a base course.

INTERIOR

The former manse has a simple good quality interior with fine joinerywork. There is a timber staircase with rosette detailing, 4-panel timber doors and a good number of surviving chimneypieces. The vestry is within the manse and provides access to the church.

Within the church the pews were removed when it ceased to be a place of worship. There is dado height timber boarded panelling and exposed timber roof trusses set on stone corbels. Simple coloured glass patterns the square leaded panes. The large timber pulpit remains in situ at the North end and is flanked by steps providing access with trefoil detailing.

MATERIALS

The former manse is harled and the tower is white-painted stone. The church is harled to the South and West elevations and stone elsewhere. There are non-traditional replacement windows to the former manse. Cast-iron rainwater goods. Graded slate roofs.

GATEPIERS AND BOUNDARY WALLS

To the South there is a stone rubble coped boundary wall linking two pairs of square stone gatepiers with pyramidal caps which are situated at the entrance of the former manse and church.