About St Patrick’s
The impressive triumphal arch and lofty steeple of St Patrick’s Church are a familiar site to passers-by on the Cowgate. This striking frontage is in fact the most recent addition to a building which has been adapted multiple times over the last 250 years.
The “English Chapel” designed by John Baxter, 1771-1774
St Patrick’s was originally built as an Episcopalian chapel and opened for worship on 9th October 1774. The “English Chapel” – so-called because the congregation used the liturgy of the Church of England – was designed by an Edinburgh architect called John Baxter (c.1737-1798) taking inspiration from St Martin-in-the-Fields (1722-1726) in London and from St Andrew’s-in-the-Square in Glasgow (1739-1756). The building was funded by public subscription and cost £6,800. A handsome portico of columns was planned for the south front but remained unbuilt.
Within, the altar table stood in a domed apse on the east side framed by giant Doric pilasters and lit by a Venetian window. The body of the church was encircled by galleries on the remaining three sides. The apse was decorated with paintings by Baxter’s friend Alexander Runciman (1736-1785) centring on a depiction of the Ascension in the vault, the first significant public religious painting since the Reformation. Despite this decorative focus, the static banks of pews on the ground-floor orientated worshippers instead towards the pulpit below the north gallery.
In 1818, the Episcopalians sold the building to a congregation of the Presbyterian Relief Church. Their only known intervention was to paint over Runciman’s Ascension, which was deemed inappropriate for worship and is today being gradually revealed by conservators.
The sanctuary by James Graham Fairley, 1898
In 1856, Bishop James Gillis acquired the Cowgate Chapel for £4,000 to serve the swelling Irish community of the Cowgate, and the church was dedicated to St Patrick. Early Catholic additions to the building were the shamrocks and the instruments of the Passion inserted into the plasterwork of the archway above the apse altar. New sacristies to the south-east and a generous new presbytery to the north of the church were soon added.
More substantial changes were made in the 1890s under James Graham Fairley (1846-1934) to accommodate the growing Catholic congregation. The west and north galleries were removed, and a handsome new sanctuary extended at the north end. Fairley replicated the detailing of Baxter’s apse on a more triumphal scale using matching Doric pilasters and entablatures to frame a deep marble-panelled chancel and side chapels. Here, the more delicate Corinthian Order was introduced for the inner archway over the high altar and the pedimented Rood aedicule. A sacristy was erected adjacent to the new sanctuary and pedimented confessionals installed throughout the church.
Chapels by Alexander McWilliam, 1921-1925
Further alterations occurred in the 1920s under the short-lived Edinburgh architect, Alexander McWilliam (1890-1926). This began in 1921 with the War Memorial chapel, replacing the obsolete sacristies beside the apse and decorated in a chunky “Wrenaissance” baroque style. This was replicated four years later in McWilliam’s completion of the unfinished side chapels, with inventive use of the Ionic Order and much marble, one dedicated to the Sacred Heart, the other to Our Lady.
The façade by Reginald Fairlie, 1928-1929
Following Alexander McWilliam’s death, the prominent Catholic architect Reginald Fairlie (1883-1952) was appointed to redesign the façade of the church. Victorian tenements and a church hall (formerly the parish school) were demolished to make way for the open garden and terrace, revealing the front of St Patrick’s to view from the Cowgate for the first time. This was given a handsome new frontage by Fairlie aligned beneath the original belltower in the form of a Roman triumphal arch modelled on Italian Renaissance churches like San Andrea in Mantua. The extended façade gave space within for new parish guild rooms above the vestibule, and a baptistry was also added adjoining the memorial chapel.