St Laurence Parish Church, High Street, Forres

Heritage listing

Category B Date Added 26/01/1971 Last Date Amended 11/07/2025 Local Authority Moray Planning Authority Moray Burgh Forres NGR NJ 03565 58876 Coordinates 303565, 858876 — A large Gothic Revival style parish church, built 1904-6 to designs by John Robertson of Inverness. The church has a rectangular plan form and is orientated east to west with a three-stage tower and stone steeple at the northeast corner with angled buttresses pinnacles, and a louvered bell stage. The nave consists of three bays with the chancel to the west. The entrance is in the east gable in a recessed gabled porch with a large Decorated Gothic window above. There are truncated gabled transepts at the east end and an additional aisle on the north side, all of which are contained within the overall rectangular footprint. The roofs are slated and there is an octagonal fleche on the main ridge. The church is constructed in bull-faced rubble with finely tooled dressings of lighter stone, both inside and outside. The walls have a corbeled parapet and shallow buttresses with plain hexagonal pinnacles, and cross finials on the gables. The windows are generally small lancets in the lower level and paired or triple lancets within Gothic arches in the upper level. The church is prominently sited in raised open grounds near the west end of High Street in Forres. Large, open-plan interior with ornate timber trusses on stone corbels. There is an ogee-fronted timber gallery with Gothic decoration at the east end with a glazed timber screen below, enclosing the narthex. The north aisle is divided from the nave by a full-height arcade of stone pillars and is occupied by a second gallery, also ogee-fronted between the pillars. In 2019-20 the space below the north gallery was glazed between the pillars to form a meetin

From Historic Environment Scotland under OGL v3.