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This Category A listed Victorian Gothic building was designed by Sir R Rowand Anderson (who also designed the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the McEwan Hall in Edinburgh). Please consider helping our restoration appeal
For nearly
a century this church was known as All Saints'. Its present unusual
dedication dates only from 1965 when St Michael's Church in Hill
Square was closed and the members of its congregation joined
that of All Saints', bringing with them the name of St Michael's
and some of the furnishings from that church.
The All Saints' congregation was first formed in 1853 when St John's Church, Princes Street, established a mission school in Earl Grey Street on the site of the present Methodist Central Hall. Part of that school building was used for worship on Sundays but it was soon found that a proper church was required. Worshippers at St John's were, apparently, not very comfortable with the idea that inhabitants of what was then the slum area of Portsburgh (to whom the mission school catered) should attend St John's itself.
The present church was begun in 1866 to a design by R. Rowand Anderson and opened the next year. What was built in 1866-7 consisted of the present nave and aisles, the transepts, chancel and what is now the St Michael's Chapel on the south of the chancel. A large steeple was intended to be built at the south west corner but not begun because of lack of money and the west end of the church was finished in rather temporary fashion.
In 1875-6 the west end was finished to a new design (again by Anderson) with the addition of the narthex with a west gallery above. By this time hopes of raising money for a steeple had vanished and instead the south west turret was put up which contains the stair to the gallery and, at the top, the church bell.
In 1897 the church was extended by the construction of the Lady Chapel with an organ loft above on the north side of the chancel. Anderson was yet again the architect but here he worked in Romanesque style rather than in the early Gothic of the rest of the church.
A small booklet giving a brief tour of the church is available
at the back of the church.
The
church also houses a remarkable collection of furnishings. These
include a Spanish Baroque pulpit of c1600 (not illustrated) which
came from St Michael's after it united with All Saints' in 1965;
an important and extensive collection of Victorian and early
20th century stained glass, including windows by William Wailes,
Clayton & Bell, C.E. Kempe and some of the earliest work
of Sir Ninian Comper.
Left: The present High Altar reredos, made for All Saints in 1889 by C.E. Kempe.
Right:
The richly coloured and delicately carved altarpiece in the St
Michael Chapel, designed by Hamilton More-Nisbet in 1901.
Below: A High Altar reredos of 1870 (now in the Lady chapel) designed by William Burges and executed in carved and painted limestone, one of the most important High Victorian Ecclesiastical artefacts in Scotland.
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