Colinton Parish Church, Edinburgh
Colinton Parish Church, Edinburgh
Colinton Parish Church, listed as St Cuthbert’s, is a Category B Church of Scotland church in Colinton Dell, rebuilt in 1907–08 by A. G. Sydney Mitchell around David Bryce’s 1837 tower.
- Location
- Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh
- Country
- Scotland
- County
- City of Edinburgh
- City / town
- Edinburgh
- Address
- Dell Road, Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh, EH13 0JR
- Postcode
- EH13 0JR
- Built
- Site from c.1095; rebuilt 1771; tower 1837; reconstructed 1907–08
- Architect
- Robert Weir and William Watters (1771); David Bryce (tower, 1837); A. G. Sydney Mitchell (1907–08)
- Denomination
- Church of Scotland
- Dedication
- Cuthbert
- Parish
- Colinton (St Cuthbert's)
- Grade
- Category B
- Style
- Italianate exterior; neo-Byzantine interior
- Materials
- Droved ashlar with polished dressings
- Grid reference
- NT 216 691
- Opening hours
- Open Monday to Friday between 10am and 2pm.
- Access
- Level access to the main areas. Accessible toilets nearby
Overview
Historic Environment Scotland records a church founded on the site about 1095 by Prince Ethelred, son of Malcolm III and Queen Margaret, probably destroyed in the Earl of Hertford’s invasion of 1544–45. A mid-seventeenth-century church was replaced in 1771 by Robert Weir (mason) and William Watters (wright). David Bryce altered the building in 1837 and is credited with the four-stage tower, which Mitchell retained when he reconstructed the church in 1907–08. The listing (LB26874, Category B, 14 December 1970) describes a square-plan Italianate exterior of droved ashlar, with a more ornate interior than is usual in the Church of Scotland.
Mitchell’s fittings include carved pulpit, lectern and communion table; stained glass includes work by James Ballantine II in the apse and later windows by William Wilson. The churchyard has seventeenth-century stones, James Gillespie’s mausoleum, an early-nineteenth-century offertory house, and an iron mortsafe. Page and Park added a hall to the south-east in 1998.