The Building

 St Vincent’s is a Listed Category B Building within the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh’s World Heritage Site and within the New Town Conservation Area.

 

World Heritage logoListed 03

 

Details: Historic Environment Scotland

13 ST VINCENT STREET, ST VINCENT CHURCH (EPISCOPAL), INCLUDING GATEPIERS AND RAILINGS  LB45522

Statement of Special Interest

Part of the Second New Town A Group, ecclesiastical building in use as such. Although this church is of small scale and has subtle external decoration compared to the neighbouring and dwarfing St Stephen’s Church, it is prominently sited between thoroughfares, and its form contrasts well with the surrounding classical tenements.

Status: Designated

Summary Information

Category: B

Group Category Details: A – see notes

Date Added: 24/03/1998

Location

Local Authority: Edinburgh

Planning Authority: Edinburgh

Burgh: Edinburgh

National Grid Reference

NGR: NT 24942 74574

Coordinates: 324942, 674574

DESCRIPTION

J, W H & J M Hay, 1857. English Gothic church, comprising 5-bay nave to S, with 4-bay aisle to N. Stugged, squared and snecked rubble walls; polished ashlar dressings and details including base course, staggered cill course, eaves course, and long and short quoins to windows and corners. Curvilinear tracery.

N (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: buttressed and gabled entrance porch to right of centre, pointed-arch door with roll-moulded head and colonnette to jambs; 2-leaf vertically boarded timber door, with iron hinges and foliate decoration. 2 bays to outer right slightly advanced; square towerlet in penultimate bay, with lancet window facing N, and tall pyramidal stone roof with iron cross finial; vertically boarded timber door to outer right, in recessed pointed arch doorpiece. Bipartite windows in bays to left of porch, in recessed 2 centred arches. Decorative floriate iron hinges. Basement area to left of entrance porch, slightly advanced, with 2-leaf vertically boarded timber doors in segmental arched recessed doorpiece, to right, and infilled doorpiece at centre and left (possibly vaults supporting stone floor).

E ELEVATION: chancel gable slightly lower than nave gable, with aisle gable recessed to outer right; canted vestry set across re-entrant angle between chancel and aisle; corniced, with blocking course; 3 traceried lights centred to E elevation; vertically boarded timber door with decorative iron hinges to N elevation.

S ELEVATION: 5-bay, comprising 3 bipartite pointed arched windows at centre; tripartite pointed arched window in gable breaking eaves, attached to rendered and coped stack, with circular can, to outer left; recessed S elevation of chancel to outer right, with single bipartite pointed arched window at centre.

W ELEVATION: obscured by adjoining terrace.

INTERIOR: circular piers to arcade between nave and aisle; scissor-braced roof. Organ by William Townsend, 1872; rebuilt by Blackett and Howden, 1897.

Variety of traceried curvilinear stained glass windows, including late 19th century lights in E window; heraldic display by A Carrick Whalen, 1975. Grey slate roof, alternating bands with fish-scale slates. Predominantly cross finials to gables. Cast-iron rainwater goods. Ashlar skews copes with gabletted skewputts.

RAILINGS AND GATEPIERS: ashlar copes surmounted by cast-iron railings with foliate cross finials. Stone chamfered square gatepiers with shallow pyramidal caps.