Page 25 - LOTN Autumn Issue 48 2021

FAITH AND CULTURE

Within the Sanctuary is a new marble altar three steps
above the floor level of the Church located in plan to
accommodate the new precepts. It was installed in 1963.
Behind it and raised by a further step is what would have
been part of the original high altar now serving as a
reredos. In complete contrast to the plain interior of the
Church, this reredos altar screen, and the Lady Altar, to the
side and below the main altar are designed and formed in a
very ornate Gothic style.
The Lady Altar is dedicated to our Lady of Aberdeen of
Good Success and has within it a niche formed to hold the
statue of Our Lady. This statue was originally housed in the
Chapel built by Bishop Elphinstone at the Bridge of Dee.
Unfortunately, only a facsimile now stands in St Peter’s
since the original, removed in haste at the Reformation
Interior of the church from its then place in the Carmelite Monastery in the Green,
Justice Street to an enclosed courtyard. From this courtyard at present stands in a Church in Belgium.
there is access to both house and church which are directly
connected. At the north-east corner of the church, next the
sanctuary, an already existing building serves as the vestry
and connects to a hall which appears to have been built at Hall Plan
a later date, while at the south-west corner of the church
an entrance tower was formed giving access to the church
proper and to the balcony organ loft over. The entrance
door with superimposed window which lights the double
volume stairwell behind, both Gothic in style, faces east.
Within the entrance tower, built in 1817, there is a fine
stair, built most elegantly in granite. A large oil painting
in a gilt frame which was the altar piece of the “Chapel of Vestry
Visitation”, gifted by King Charles X of France, completes this
very attractive space. The plan of the church is rectangular
in form built with a north/south axis.
The Church building itself is quite undistinguished, being
in fact a simple large space with little embellishment,
reducing in width at the north end to form an apse which Church
is the Sanctuary. At this point a Tudor style timber arch
held on timber corbels has been added to ornament the
opening. The flanking walls to east and west have been
dignified with three equilateral Gothic arched windows
each randomly opposed, giving the building a religious
reference.
A gallery organ loft absorbing about one third of the Day Chapel Presbytery
floor plan can be accessed from the entrance tower and the
house and under this balcony a day chapel and meeting
area has been recently formed. Within this area on the left
on entry is the baptistry, with its marble font, installed in Hall
the early 1960s. Through this Chapel the congregation
passes to the main body of the Church. Courtyard
Giving light into the Gallery organ loft area south, is
a three-part Gothic window with interlocking mullions
inserted in the South Gable in 1817 at the same time as the
entrance tower was being built.
Only at the entrance to the Church from the courtyard
has any attempt been made at external ornamentation
with the addition, at the entrance tower and south gable of
a castellated effect at the wall heads to “add to its neatness”.
Two side aisles at quarter points across the Church give
access to the Sanctuary which is raised above the general Justice Street
area of the Church and is top lit through a cupola. The pews
are fixed and spartan.

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