Edinburgh, Castle Terrace, St Mark's Unitarian Church

NT27SW 1130 24813 73486

ARCHITECT: David Bryce, 1834-5.

Undertaken by Bryce shortly after completing Lothian Road Church for the United Secession (1831). The building was designed to seat 700. As the centre of a terrace, the windows had to be placed in the south wall, either side of the pulpit designed for an auditory downstairs and upstairs. The barrel shaped roof was supported on cast iron classical columns which also carried the gallery. The frontage in Baroque style bears on it the inscription 'There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus'. The building measures 46 feet wide by c.68 feet long. The chapel was opened for public worship on 18 October 1835 when George Harris, who had ministered at Glasgow since 1825, and who stormed Scotland preaching the Unitarian gospel, was the preacher. The building cost around #1500. To call it a 'Unitarian Chapel' was held to be objectionable because it could be taken as a confession of faith, so it was named St Mark's simply to distinguish it from other churches. Alterations carried out on the interior in 1881, reducing seating capacity to 400. Now home of Unitarians in Edinburgh, with a congregation of 150.

A M Hill 1977

Windows South German Baroque. Columns Doric below, supporting U-plan gallery, Corinthian above. Organ at east end by A.E. Ingram, 1911, in late Stuart carved oak case. Bryce's pulpit and precentor's desk removed and demolished c.1972, barring the octagonal sounding-board, with spires and finials.

C McKean 1992; J Gifford C McWilliam D Walker 1984