Church architecture in Scotland
From the thirteenth century elements of the European Gothic style began to appear in Scotland, culminating in buildings such as Glasgow Cathedral and the rebuilt Melrose Abbey.
This style was adopted by both Presbyterian and Episcopalian wings of the Scottish Kirk, but there were some attempts to introduce Baroque elements into church building after the Restoration.
In the eighteenth century the influence of James Gibbs led to churches that employed classical elements, with a pedimented rectangular plan and often with a steeple.
In the second half of the twentieth century new churches were highly influenced by Modernism, resulting in rectangular and irregularly shaped buildings, built in new materials, although many of these were later demolished.
These may originally have been wooden, like that excavated at Whithorn,[1] but most of those for which evidence survives from this era are basic masonry-built churches, beginning on the west coast and islands and spreading south and east.
[2]After the eleventh century, as masonry techniques advanced, ashlar blocks became more rectangular, resulting in more stable walls that could incorporate refined architectural moulding and detailing that can be seen in corbelling, buttressing, lintels and arching.
[7] The introduction of this style to Scotland is associated with the ecclesiastical reforms that began in the reign of Máel Coluim III (r. 1058–93), bringing continental ideas of monasticism and church organisation to the country.
The oldest Romanesque church in Scotland is probably the small chapel built for Máel Coluim's wife Margaret on Castle Rock, Edinburgh, with a vaulted semi-circular apse.
This style became characteristic of the early Gothic in Britain and can be seen at Dundrennan Abbey, begun around 1142, which resembles religious foundations in northern England.
One of the finest examples is Sweetheart Abbey near Dumfries, a Cistercian monastery, named after the burial of John de Balliol's heart alongside the body of his wife.
French master-mason John Morrow was employed at the building of Glasgow Cathedral and the rebuilding of Melrose Abbey, both considered fine examples of Gothic architecture.
[4] The impact of the Renaissance on ecclesiastical architecture can be seen in the re-adoption of low-massive church building with round arches and pillars, in contrast to the perpendicular Gothic style that was particularly dominant in England in the late Medieval era.
The adoption of the low-massive style may have been influenced by close contacts with Rome and the Netherlands, and was perhaps a conscious reaction against English forms in favour of continental ones.
It can be seen in the nave of Dunkeld Cathedral, begun in 1406, the facade of St Mary's, Haddington from the 1460s and in the chapel of Bishop Elphinstone's Kings College, Aberdeen (1500–09).
[19] The early sixteenth century saw crown steeples built on churches with royal connections, symbolising imperial monarchy, as at St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh.
Examples include Dunnottar Castle in the 1580s, Greenock (1591) and Durness (1619),[22] These new buildings often had windows on the south wall and none on the north, which became a unique feature of Reformation kirks.
[23] The church of Greyfriars, Edinburgh, built between 1602 and 1620, used a rectangular layout with a largely Gothic form, but that at Dirleton (1612), had a more sophisticated classical style.
[24] The drive to episcopalian forms of worship may have resulted in more linear patterns, including rectangular plans with the pulpit on the end opposite the entrance.
[25] The Latin Cross form, increasingly popular in Counter Reformation Catholicism, was also used, as in Smith's Canongate Kirk (1688–90), but here it never saw episcopal service as the Presbyterian revolution of 1689–90 occurred before it was completed and the chancel was blocked up, making it, in effect, a T-plan.
He introduced a consciously antique style in his rebuilding of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, with a massive, steepled portico and rectangular, side-aisled plan.
Gibbs' own design for St. Nicholas West, Aberdeen (1752–55), had the same rectangular plan, with a nave-and-aisles, barrel-vaulted layout with superimposed pedimented front.
[28] At Fochabers, from 1776 John Baxter redesigned the village on a grid plan, with a central square focused on Bellie Church (1795–97), still following in the tradition of Gibbs, with a tetrastyle portico and steeple.
[33] A sub-set of the Medieval revival were Neo-Romanesque churches, often called "Norman" at the time, built in a style that incorporated Romanesque, Byzantine and Anglo-Saxon features within a low-massive framework.
It avoided the characteristic steeple of Glasgow churches in favour of a wide tower, and has a simple, elegant, rectangular structure with a single aisle.
Roman Catholic examples included Reginald Fairlie's Immaculate Conception Church, Fort William (1933–34), and Archibald Macpherson's St Matthew, Rosewell (completed 1926).
From the later 1920s he pursued a brick style of Catholic architecture, pioneered by Macpherson in Edinburgh and combined with the classical tendencies of Fairlie's refacing of St Patrick's, Cowgate (1928–29).
Coia's first church, St Anne's, Dennistoun (1931), utilised the engineering techniques of Beaux-Arts architecture, resulting in a broad, centralised space, with narrow arcades rather than aisles, with a monumental facade of red-brick.
[42] The Catholic Church, whose traditional membership was most affected by the changes in housing, was the first to react to this situation, creating 76 new parishes between 1845 and 1960 in the west of the country alone.
This was a wedge-shaped construction of white-painted common brick focused on a dramatic, jagged metal cross by the sculptor Benno Schotz.
From about 1960, all Gillespie, Kidd & Coia's churches were designed in this Late Modernist style, as at St Bride's, East Kilbride (1963–64), which had a rectangular plan.
