The architect was a Roman Catholic, Mr Fairlie, a man with a profound knowledge of Celtic culture, monastic architecture, and a deep sensitivity for what was appropriate and fitting in relating the past to the present through ecclesiastical continuity.
He was well aware of the origin of 'Methkyl' from Culdee cave, through monastic establishment in stone from the 13th century, with Norman influences, through the Roman Catholic period until the Reformation and then the Protestant spell with its various parting or schisms. How best could he incorporate that story in stone, lime and furnishings?
His site plan was cruciform, including the principal features of earlier monastic establishments. From the west door the visitor enters the body of the church. The transepts, North and South, repeat the areas used in the earlier monastic buildings as side chapels. The Rood Screen dividing the nave from the chancel is placed back against the organ, as a screen.
From the North Transept short cloisters lead to the session house, while from there, a spiral stair leads to the vestry where the vestments are kept. All the essential features of monastic days are recalled in the site plan. The internal stone work shows in pediments and capitals faint traces of Norman and Gothic circular mouldings, mediaeval features.
However, it is in the woodcarvings where the architect has excelled in telling, through symbolism, the long thread of religious tradition. The legs of the communion table are made from English oak showing the convolutes and whorls of Celtic design.
Instead of seats in the monastic style for canons and priors are six elders chairs, with the seventh central chair as the ministers. The carved arm rests of the elder chairs are drawn from the grotesque caricatures of the Middle Ages, from the 'Bestiaries'.
Above the minister's chair is the carved eagle, the symbol of the Evangel, with its ornate feathers and wing span. The organ screent is continuous from wall to wall with rounded Norman arches which help to display the organ pipes between balusters which carry a plinth, freize and coping.
The pediments and capitals of the balusters carry ornate carvings, none of which repeats itself yet symbolises decorative carved animal forms typical of mediaeval monastic decoration. There is a plinth below the freize of Celtic scroll work at the top of the organ. Panels with circles containing the Kirkmadrine monogram, Chrisma, the plain Latin cross and the pulpit fall monogram I.H.S., the fish symbol, all concealed in scroll work. It is well nigh impossible to find any symbol or motif repeated showing how rich was the architect's knowledge of church symbolism from the earliest days of Christianity until the later English style of church architecture and decoration.
One last feature of the building bears comment. The architect was a Roman Catholic, the builder a Leith contractor, a member of the United Free Church, the wood carver from York, an Episcopalian, the joiner a local man, a member of the Parish Church. All co-operated, before the days of ecumenism to get a job of work done so that the finished structure should represent a place of Christian worship and symbolise, from earliest times, the continuity of that worship. Few Parish churches, today can claim such a wealth of historical and ecclesiastical tradition interpreted through symbolism