St Bride

Architects Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein designed St Bride's.

It's doubtful that Andy and Isi would have seen Mains Castle prior to working on St Bride's. Nevertheless, the castle speaks in Scotland's native architectural language and has features which MacMillan and Metzstein have incorporated into their own modern vocabulary. An obvious example would be how the deep slotted windows of the castle find an echo in the interior of the great east wall of the church.

There are subtler references to what, in the 19th century, became the Scottish Baronial style. This style influenced architects such as James MacLaren and Mackintosh.

The interior of St Bride's has amongst the highest walls and longest span of any church by MacMillan and Metzstein. The lighting of the sanctuary and pulpit required particular ingenuity: Andy and Isi came up with the idea of light cannons to focus attention on the altar and pulpit.

Even shorn of its campanile, St Bride's insists on being noticed, on being regarded, on being talked about and endlessly argued over from its vantage point above Avondale. An insistence which we now find grabbing the attention of academics around the world.

Here is a building, a modern building, which consciously and unashamedly proclaims its purpose and the history of its roots: a building which could not have taken its form without that purpose and history. At the start of the 21st century, the parish of St Bride's is the keeper of an idea, an icon, a symbol planted on the side of a hill.