Publication Account

Date 1951

Event ID 1097492

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1097492

RCAHMS County Inventory: The City of Edinburgh

4. Trinity College Church.

This collegiate church was founded in 1460 by Marie of Gueldres, in memory of her husband James II, and was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the Blessed Virgin, St. Ninian and All Saints. It occupied the site of a former chapel of St. Ninian,* in the hollow below the S.W. shoulder of the Calton Hill, where it immediately adjoined the town gate that was originally named after St. Andrew but which latterly became known as Leith Wynd Port. On its S. side stood the manses of the prebendaries facing, on the opposite side of the street, the Trinity Hospital, founded as another part of the same benefaction for the support of thirteen bedemen. The establishment, or college, included a provost, eight prebendaries and two choristers, the priests being bound by the terms of their appointment to "make personal residence and by themselves and not by another or others" to fulfil the obligations of their office - a provision calculated to prevent the evils of absenteeism from which both Church and State were then suffering. The construction of the collegiate church was begun in the lifetime of the foundress under the direction of Sir Edward Bonkill, the first provost, and John Halkerstone, master of the fabric; but when, in 1531, operations were broken off, never to be resumed, no more than the choir and transepts had been completed. The nave had not been begun, and of the nave aisles only a few stones had been laid. When Queen Mary died, in 1463, her obsequies were celebrated in Brechin Cathedral but she was laid to rest in the church that she had founded in Edinburgh. Accounts of the searches made on the site for her remains will be found in P.S.A.S., iv (1860-2), pp. 554-77.

The hospital, already out of repair in 1576, was removed in 1585 to the site previously occupied by the prebendaries' manses, which had been destroyed in 1558. Church and hospital are both illustrated in Gordon of Rothiemay's map of 1647, each standing in its own enclosure on the W. side of Leith Wynd and overlooking on the W. a garden down the middle of which runs a stream** having a dovecot on its N. bank. The smaller court is entered at the centre of the E. side by a gateway that is surmounted by a pyramidal spire with a cross; and from the gateway a two-storeyed range extends N. and S. along the E. side of the court and abuts on a short two-storeyed building occupying most of the N. side. On the S. side stands an oblong building of two storeys and an attic, which has a wing extending to the S. and, apparently, a round tower with a pyramidal roof projecting from the S.E. corner. A simple archway gives access from Leith Wynd to the larger enclosure, which the church, incomplete as it is, almost covers. The church itself has an apsidal-ended, aisled choir, shallow transepts, and a N. re-vestry. Above the crossing rises a tower, shown with a temporary couple-roof. From later drawings it appears that the W. crossing-arch was filled in with a screen wall, that all parts were covered with tierceron vaults, that the high roofs were slated, and that the re-vestry and aisles were stone-flagged. The entrance led through a porch into the S. aisle. Sir Daniel Wilson has probably given the most comprehensive account of the building.(1)

After the Reformation the church fell to the Crown and was conveyed with its endowments to the provost and magistrates of Edinburgh by a royal charter of 12th November, 1567 (2). This led, in the end, to its downfall, for some three centuries later, with the consent of the minister, the presbytery and the town council, the property was acquired by the North British Railway Company who proceeded, in 1848, to demolish the church to make way for the Waverley Station. A spirited protest against the demolition was entered by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, who had memorialised the provost and magistrates, as well as the Lords of H.M. Treasury, in 1844 (3); and although the protest was unsuccessful, as the parties immediately concerned had assented to the demolition, it did some good in that the operation was undertaken with some care, the individual stones being numbered on removal in correspondence with record drawings in order that the church might be rebuilt upon some other site. But unfortunately, as the result of a law-suit, the stones were suffered to lie unprotected for nearly thirty years on the Calton Hill, where they formed a convenient source of material for suburban rockeries. Some of the strays have since been gathered together and placed in Lady Stair's House (No. 15), while others are at the Astley Ainslie Institute (No. 205); the fragments of a 15th century Gothic window in the rockery at Craigcrook Castle (4) are likewise believed to have come from here.

RCAHMS 1951

(1)P.S.A.S., xviii (1883-4), pp. 128-70. (2) Laing, Collegiate Churches, p. xxviii. (3) Arch. Scot., iv, p.

448. (4) Inventory of Midlothian, p. 37.

*Arnot was wrong in believing that the remains described by him in The History of Edinburgh, p.248, were those of St Ninian’s Chapel, as they were evidently about 200 yards away from the chapel’s true position.

**This stream was the ‘torrent’ or ‘strand’ that carried off the overflow of the North Loch.