Church of the Immaculate Conception (St. Mary's)

Introduction

The Church of the Immaculate Conception (Saint Mary's) in Stonehaven was designed by J Russell MacKenzie of Aberdeen and opened on 22nd August 1877. This church is the last remaining place of worship in Stonehaven's Old Town.

History

The church was financed from an endowment donated by Elsa Mona Rickart Hepburn, widow of William Rickart Hepburn of Rickarton. It is believed that the church was built in memory of her daughter.

The nearby soup kitchen was presented to the church by George Blackie in 1905. The building date varies from 1875 to 1879 depending upon the source. An American organ was installed in April 1880.

Architecture and furnishings

The church was built in Neo Gothic style using local brown sandstone. The church has a 4-stage tower and a bold Gothic arched recessed door. The interior displays hammer beams on the roof and a chevroned pattern in the ceiling.

A lancet to SE transept 'Come Holy Spirit' was made by Edinburgh Stained Glass House in 2003. The church comprises a 3-bay aisless nave, shallow gabled transepts, a semicircular apse, a polygonal baptistry, and a 4-stage buttressed tower with belfry and octagonal pinnacled spire. The building is constructed of coursed, squared and snecked rubble with ashlar dressings. The northeast principal elevation features a deeply moulded gabled doorway with engaged colonettes, flanking bays with triple lancets behind a colonnade, and a cross-finialled gablehead with a wheel window.

The tower on the southeast side has a lancet at the first stage, a reduced blank second stage, a circular window at the third stage, and a pinnacled arcaded belfry with a polygonal spire and decorative cast-iron weathervane. The southwest elevation has paired cusped lancets flanking an almost full-height apsidal bay at the centre, with a blank baptistry to the left and the tower set back in the angle at the right. The northwest elevation has a 3-bay nave with dividing buttresses, a transept with two cusped lancets incorporated into the base of a wheel window, and a lower baptistery projecting at the outer right.

The interior includes a moulded cornice, hammerbeam roof with decorative timber braces, timber pews, and boarded dadoes. The transept has a double arch springing from a low column with a moulded capital. The apsidal chancel has an elegant braced timber roof supported on stone corbels. The northeast traceried window has coloured glass depicting Saint Margarita.

The apse and baptistry have leaded diamond pattern glazing. The church has grey slates, ashlar-coped skews, and cast-iron downpipes with polygonal rainwater hoppers. The Stations of the Cross were painted by F Walterson, a Shetland artist.

Visiting

The church is an ecclesiastical building in use as such. The church is an important quiet place on its island site surrounded by roads and behind the High Street.