Holyrood Chapel - Newburgh, Aberdeenshire, Scotland - Presbyterian Churches on Waymarking.com

Originally Newburgh Mathers School, built in 1838 in the Aberdeenshire village, ten miles north up the coast from the city of Aberdeen, the building was converted into a Chapel of Ease in 1882 for Foveran Parish Church, just south of the village, when a new public school was built.

Named after the nearby medieval chapel of the Holyrood & St Thomas the Martyr of which only the Udny Family Mausoleum survives in the Holyrood Cemetery, a tower was added in 1892 at the centre of the L-plan building on the corner of Main Street and School Road.

Despite being designed as a school, the building has ecclesiastical features such as gothic pointed-arch windows and stone cross finials. A number of chimneys reveal an amount of fireplaces in the building.

The chapel is built of rough-coursed granite rubble with the exception of the later tower and doorway which consists of fine ashlar stone. The larger north-south wing consists of the nave, with the smaller east wing being a former classroom. The south gable has a large single pointed-arch window with wooden tracery. The side walls have smaller versions and a gabled bay in the east elevation has a tall narrow pointed-arch window. The east aisle has similar, but smaller windows.

The main feature is the central tower built after the conversion, which is square plan with the main doorway in the east face. Small stepped buttresses are on the south-east corner, and above the belfry stage are tall pairs of lancet openings with large wooden louvers set between hexagonal corner buttresses. Towards the top on each face is a gabled section with a large clock face between pinnacled tops. A simple pyramidal spire rises above.

The building now shares services with Foveran Parish Church and is of the Church of Scotland denomination.