Dunscore Church
Dunscore Church
Dunscore Parish Church is a Category A listed Church of Scotland kirk in Dunscore, Dumfries and Galloway, designed by James Thomson of Dumfries and built in 1823–24 on the site of an earlier ruinous kirk.
- Location
- Dunscore, Dumfries & Galloway
- Country
- Scotland
- County
- Dumfries & Galloway
- City / town
- Dunscore
- Address
- Dunscore, Dumfries & Galloway, DG2 0SZ
- Postcode
- DG2 0SZ
- Built
- 1823–24
- Architect
- James Thomson of Dumfries
- Denomination
- Church of Scotland
- Parish
- Dunscore
- Grade
- A
- Style
- Gothic
- Materials
- Rubble with painted ashlar dressings; slate roof
- Grid reference
- NX 867 843
- Opening hours
- Opening times vary throughout the year but the Dunscore Heritage Centre is open every Sunday from 2pm to 4pm.
- Access
- Level access to the main areas. Level access throughout. Accessible toilets in church
Overview
Historic Environment Scotland records a simple rectangular-plan, three-bay buttressed Gothic church with a three-stage square tower at the west gable. The fabric is rubble-built with contrasting painted ashlar dressings and long-and-short worked dressings to doors, windows and tower quoins. Openings are hood-moulded and pointed; windows to the body have simple Y-traceried mullions with a transom at gallery level. The tower has a lintelled west doorway with traceried fanlight, offset stages, louvred belfry openings and pinnacles linked by a simple parapet. The roof is slated.
The listing is Category A for the interior fittings: a horseshoe gallery with panelled front on plain columns, and a curved pulpit below a domed sounding board supported by a pilastered and panelled back board on the west wall. The parish history states that the 1823 kirk was built for 850 worshippers at a cost of £1,072, and that an older baptismal font, once built into the wall, was reset on a stand in 1923. A heritage centre in the church commemorates Jane Haining, a Dunscore resident who died at Auschwitz while serving as a Church of Scotland matron in Budapest.