Saint Agnes (Lambhill)

Introduction

Saint Agnes in Lambhill, within the Archdiocese of Glasgow, is a Category B listed building, listed on 06/04/1992. The church was designed by Pugin and Pugin and built by John Devlin and Son in 1893-4.

History

The memorial stone for Saint Agnes was laid on 23 May 1893. In 1913, Pugin and Pugin decorated the interior, with the work executed by McCulloch and Co. The church is a large Gothic church, rectangular-plan with lean-to aisles to a 5-sided apse, built of red sandstone.

Architecture and furnishings

The interior features an outstanding multi-alabaster Gothic pulpit, ornately carved. The interior includes a pierced altar rail with colonettes, in marble and alabaster, en suite. The west elevation has a gable to the nave, angle buttresses, a narrow quatrefoil window, and two pointed arch entrances in gabled panels with deep-set doors. The east elevation is a five-sided full-height buttressed apse with hoodmoulded, two-light traceried lancets in the upper portion of each bay, and a decorative iron cross finial.

The south elevation is seven bays with a lean-to aisle, gablet-capped angle buttresses, pilasters dividing bays, and five segmentally arched cusped three-light windows to the centre bays. The north elevation is seven bays with an outer bay to the right having a narrow pointed arch doorway and flanking lancet, and a sacristy projecting from the outer left bays with four-centred tripartites to the north. The roof is steeply pitched with grey slates, decorative clay ridge tiles, and ashlar coped skews. The interior has a pointed arch arcade on polygonal ashlar columns to the aisles, a tall chancel arch with nook shaft, and moulded surrounds and archivolt to the arches.

The interior has rendered walls with silver-grey paint and gilded quatrefoil stencils with emblems to the spandrels. The interior has an open roof with ashlar corbelled timber braces dividing the clerestorey bays. There is a gallery above the vestibule to the west with a pierced, cusped balustrade. The apse has a stencilled and gilded blue dado, and the ceiling has a stencilled frieze and gilded stars.

The gatepiers, boundary walls and railings are of chamfered red sandstone ashlar piers with gablet caps, and ashlar coped, bull-faced base course to wrought-iron railings with decorative panels. There is a hoodmoulded and cusped ashlar aumbry. Two fine tripartite altars to side chapels have marble nook shafts and mosaic panels, with a statue of Our Lady in a canopied niche at the centre of the right-hand altar and a statue of Jesus Christ to the left. There are fine brass gates to the altar rail and a decorative bracket to the sanctuary lamp.