Bathgate High Church, Jarvey Street, Bathgate

Bathgate High Church, located on Jarvey Street in Bathgate, was built in 1882-1884 by Wardrop and Reid. It is a Romanesque church incorporating Gothic pinnacles and an entrance tower. The church is constructed of squared and snecked sandstone with ashlar dressings, featuring a base course, battered buttresses, a cill course, impost blocks, and plain hoodmoulds with moulded arrises.

The three-stage entrance tower is engaged at the west end of the southwest elevation. It has a round-arched door with nookshafts and cushion capitals above a short flight of steps. A window is located to the northwest at ground level, and lower level windows on the second stage are punctuated by a cill course. The third stage, a bell chamber, is recessed with louvred round-arched bipartite windows, each incorporating a Roman numeral clock face. A crenellated parapet tops the tower, adorned with crocketed corner pinnacles.

The southwest elevation has six bays, with the tower to the left. Four bays are dedicated to the nave, and two further bays to the outer right suggest a transept, all beneath a gable flanked by pinnacles. A round-arched door is situated between windows, with a small round-arched window in the gablehead. The southeast, or apse, elevation features a five-light bowed apse with nookshafted round-arched lights, flanked by tall single windows.

The northeast elevation incorporates a single-storey session house and hall clustered together and adjoining the centre of the nave. Gabled outer bays flank these, complemented by gablehead windows, cross finials, and crocketed pinnacles. A deep, bowed end elevation to the session house/hall echoes the apse, with round-arched windows. A gabled porch with a round-arched door fronts the northeast, while a canted projection with a piended roof extends to the northwest.

Square lead-paned windows with border glazing are present throughout, with stained glass in the apse protected by secondary external glazing. The roof is covered in grey slates.

The interior features a tripartite round-arched narthex entrance screen. The rendered interior is brightly painted, and a U-plan gallery rests on columns with decorative timber brackets, accompanied by a timber gallery of panelled and arcaded design. A coombed ceiling features hammer braces to the compartmentalised soffit around a top-lit centrepiece. The apse has a rib-vaulted roof with moulded corbels and pointed arches. Original pews remain. Marble steps lead to an encaustic tile mosaic floor within the semi-octagonal apse, flanked by cushion-capitalled nookshafts framing the round-arch. An octagonal timber pulpit incorporates Gothic panels and steps. A marble font sits on a cluster column shaft supporting a Gothic panelled basin. The organ, housed within a filigreed timber case in the gallery, is dedicated to Bishop.

The graveyard contains monuments dating from circa 1740 and earlier, relating to a former church on the site. These include many scroll-headed gravestones, later classical stones, obelisks, and wall monuments, notably one to Rev Walter Jardine, 1811.

Boundary walls constructed of squared sandstone rubble incorporate saddleback ashlar coping and are mounted by railings separated by piers; a terrace wall with rounded coping borders the graveyard. Ashlar gatepiers with panelled upper shafts and pyramidal caps are situated to the southwest, alongside octagonal gatepiers with dome-capped shafts and undulating ornament. Two pairs of two-leaf gates are present, with a round-arched ashlar gateway to the west.