St Stephen Church

After failing to get a blip on a driech day, when homeward bound the spire of St Stephens Church caught my eye and I tried to capture the internal lighting.

Evaluating now I should of increased the film speed and perhaps risked standing for a few seconds in the middle of the street to get a better shot BUT...I didn't although I must remember to work with film speed more in the future. The jury is out on whether standing in dark clothes on a dark set stone street in the evening rush hour to get the shot is right.

St Stephen Church, built 1827-28 and designed by Henry Plaifair, was originally planned to be built about 200 yards from its current location and facing East not South. A new private school, The Edinburgh Academy, was founded by a consortium out of favour with the city fathers and to ensure it did not have a good principle vista towards the Edinburgh New Town and dominate the public view to the North the church's final location was moved by the city council to be directly between the school and the New Town.

By the 1950's the building had become too large for the congregation and a reinforced concrete deck was inserted at the internal gallery level to keep the space above as a church and that below as a series of halls that are available for public hire. A drastic but successful adaption of a church building that perhaps should have been copied in many other instances.