Publication Account

Date 1988

Event ID 656242

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/656242

NF19NW 21.02 10355 99101

Its restoration completed in 1980, the church is an oblong and gabled structure which occupies a position on the E edge of the army camp. It is aligned NE-SW and the entrance is in the landward-facing NE gable-wall. The rubble masonry walls are rendered with cement and lime and the roof is slated, there being no exposed gable copes or freestone dressings. The building is of two window bays, and the windows and doorway have arch-pointed heads.

Measuring 10.7m in length by 6.8m transversely over walls 0.7m thick, it conforms almost exactly to the dimensions of 35ft (10.67m) and 22ft 4in (6.81m) specified on Robert Stevenson's design-drawing of 1826. That drawing shows that the church was intended to contain 106 sitters in nine pairs of pews flanking a central aisle, with two further pairs on each side of an octagonal pulpit at the SW end. The present arrangement consists of seven pairs of bench-pews facing a relatively large pulpit which was introduced into the church after the First World War.

A schoolroom wing was added on the NW side between 1897 and 1900. It is a gabled structure with a doorway in the re-entrant angle, and one of the church windows was altered to form a communicating doorway. The interior of the schoolroom measures 6.7m by 4.1m, and there is a fireplace set towards the N corner of the NW gable-wall.

The former manse, which now serves as the Sergeant's Mess, has not been surveyed in detail. The external appearance of the building suggests that it contains a linear arrangement of at least three main rooms. The drawing of 1826, on the other hand, shows that it was intended to be of a four-square plan, consisting of two bedrooms, a parlour and a kitchen, all opening off a central transverse corridor. It was linked by a passage to a minister's door at the SW end of the church.

From 1864 until 1930 the bell of the wrecked Greenock-registered SS Janet Cowan served as the church bell, and a modern Greenock-made bell now stands in a wooden belfry-frame close to the entrance to the church.

G P Stell and M Harman 1988.