Page:The ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland ( Volume 3).djvu/335

 successors endowed it with sufficient revenues. After the Reformation it continued to be the parish church till 1708, when a new church was built in the neighbouring village of Gifford.

PARISH CHURCH,.

This is one of the best preserved of the old churches of Scotland, and although it has suffered severely by various renovations and restorations, it is still a building of very considerable interest. The church occupies a high situation on the Castle Hill, and as approached up the steep streets, the lofty east end which first appears to view, with its prominent buttresses and tall windows, has a most imposing and picturesque effect. The edifice consists of two divisions, the nave and choir, which were built at two different periods. The nave, which is the oldest part, is undoubtedly the church referred to in the Chamberlain's Accounts for the year from July 1413 to June 1414, in which he "discharges himself of the issues of ayre held at Stirling, because it was granted to the work of the parish church which had been burnt." Of the earlier church which had been burnt nothing now remains. The date of the east end or choir is known to be between 1507 and 1520.

The building (Fig. 1238) consists, from end to end, of a central nave with north and south aisles (the aisles being vaulted in stone), an eastern apse, and a western tower. The nave has five bays, the choir three bays, and they are separated by a wide bay, which may be termed the crossing. The crossing now serves as an entrance hall to the two churches which are located in the edifice, walls being built across each side of the crossing so as to enclose the choir as one church and the nave as the other. The total internal length of the building, exclusive of the apse and tower, is about 160 feet by about 55 feet in width; including apse and tower the internal length is about 200 feet.

The original entrance to the church was through the western tower, and as the ground rises considerably towards the west, there must have been steps down to the floor of the nave. The western doorway was destroyed in 1818, when the sill of the window above was lowered into the space occupied by the door arch, but the bases and lower part of the door jambs still remain (Fig. 1239). The tower, which is vaulted, opens into the nave (as at Linlithgow) through a lofty pointed arch, springing from moulded responds (Fig. 1240).