General view of St Cuthbert's Church and churchyard, Edinburgh

Description General view of St Cuthbert's Church and churchyard, Edinburgh

Date 1895

Collection Records of Bedford Lemere and Company, photographers, London, England

Catalogue Number SC 717183

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of BL 13111/1

Scope and Content St Cuthbert's Parish Church and Churchyard, Lothian Road, Edinburgh, from the south-east St Cuthbert's Parish Church, a large imposing Renaissance-style church with Baroque detailing, was designed by the architect, Hippolyte Jean Blanc, and built in 1892-5 at the west end of Princes Street Gardens on an ancient church site dating from the 12th century. The architectural photographer, Harry Bedford Lemere, was commissioned to photograph the building in 1895. The church incorporates the late 18th-century Georgian west tower and steeple (left) of a previous church on the site. The huge bulk of the nave, with round-arched windows and Corinthian pilasters at first-floor level, has a wide-pitched roof and shallow pedimented transepts. Paired Baroque-style towers flank the semi-domed apse at the east end (right). The churchyard dates from the late 16th century. The churchyard was, during the early 19th century, frequently raided by grave-robbers who could earn large sums of money selling corpses to Edinburgh University's Anatomy Department for dissection. It is also the burial place of many famous Scots, including the mathematician, John Napier of Merchiston, who, in 1614, established the theoretical basis of logarithms. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/717183

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap