About

The church was designed by the eminent Edinburgh architect Reginald Fairlie and is a good example of the simple Romanesque style church which Fairlie favoured for many of his church commissions. Fairlie was committed to good workmanship and good materials where the budget allowed, as is the case with this church.

Fairlie’s church was financed by the Stirlings of Keir. The family converted to Catholicism on the marriage of Sir Archibald Stirling to the catholic Lady Lovat of Morar. Lady Lovat financed the church as a memorial to her husband raising funds through the sale of an El Greco painting to the National Gallery, London. All materials, stone, slates and timber, used in the construction were from the Keir estate. Statuary to niches of church and church hall were added in 2000.

The first Catholic chapel on this site was a converted hayloft. The villa (now the presbytery) and coachhouse (now the church hall) had been built in the 1860s or 1870s. They were acquired by the Catholic Church and converted to presbytery and chapel in 1882 at the instigation of Father Paul MacLachlan, priest at Doune, probably with funds from the Stirlings of Keir or other wealthy members of his Doune congregation. This church was initially known as SS John and Blane’s RC Church.

Reginald Fairlie (1883-1952) trained under Robert Stodart Lorimer and in 1909, he set up his own practice at 7 Ainslie Place, Edinburgh. His ethos was based on nationalism, traditionalism and religion. He himself was a committed Roman Catholic and undertook many commissions for the Catholic Church. He also carried out a number of country house renovations, estate lodges although churches formed the largest part of his practice. Fairlie, with his religious belief, designed churches as workable environments and decorative structures secondly. The bulk of his 1920’s church work was carried out on limited funds resulting in designs for thrifty Romanesque churches which were executed in concrete. He still favoured a rustic, handcrafted traditional church where funds allowed but these were few and far between. By the 1930s, Fairlie adapted his designs to the clean lines of modernism but did not fully commit as some younger designers, like Jack Coia. Fairlie’s best known works are the National Library of Scotland and Fort Augustus Abbey Church, but the smaller less ostentatious churches form the largest group in his oeuvre.