Watching Brief

Date 1998

Event ID 545966

Category Recording

Type Watching Brief

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/545966

NT 275 631 Groundworks were monitored on Chapel Loan between College Hill and the new visitor centre to the NW and NE of the chapel respectively. The foundations of the visitor centre, a stables/coach house of two phases (17th and 19th century), were found to have been built of reused dressed ashlar and other worked stone, with a single protruding base course built directly onto subsoil.

At the chapel, a services access trench was excavated archaeologically at the foot of the pier at the junction of the partly completed N transept and the existing E wall of the crossing tower. Here the founds of Kerr?s baptistery of 1880-81 were exposed, overlying the 15th-century founds of the pier itself. The latter were found to be of substantial construction, the pier foot resting upon two courses of massive roughly hewn red sandstone blocks set into natural.

Further work to the visitor centre permitted a full assessment of the structure and its flooring which, in the smaller eastern bay, consisted of parts of a cobbled stable floor with drain, perhaps of the 17th century. The larger western bay had been enlarged in the 19th century retaining earlier S and E walls, the latter still displaying a crow-stepped gable head. Much of the fabric of the visitor centre from both phases consisted of reused dressed ashlar, moulded and sculpted sandstone blocks. The protruding found course within the western bay had been largely built of the massive sandstone blocks seen at the chapel pier base.

Deconstruction of the walling dividing the two bays revealed the fossilised jamb of a gate pier and some 20 carved stones ranging from simple but substantial arcade voussoirs, to moulded jamb stones and a number of sculpted stones. Of the latter, two appear similar to 17th-century details of the surviving wing of Rosslyn Castle, while two further fragments form a complete finial or dormer pediment. This takes the form of a circular rosette surmounting a triangular body that frames a carved panel of four leaf- or petal-like lobes (Addyman 1998, fig 44). An identical finial can be seen upon the exterior wall-head of the N aisle of the chapel, although this itself may have come from ruined parts of the castle.

The creation of the new car park involved the grading of an area of open field at the corner of Chapel Loan and the lane to Rosslyn Castle. A series of very substantial pit-like features were revealed. These contained masonry and other debris, wine bottles and domestic rubbish that can most likely be associated with the use of College Hill as an inn during the later 18th and earlier part of the 19th century. The foundation course of what was interpreted as a barn was revealed along the side of the castle lane. Its masonry contained finely worked blocks of robbed medieval ashlar, while an internal sub-division and possible barn entrance into the field to the W were its only discernible features. A later well-constructed boundary wall was erected running from the N wall of the barn. The masonry of each was overlain by a later 19th-century domestic rubbish dump. The barn can probably be associated with the use of College Hill and may similarly date from the mid- to late 18th century.

A report will be lodged with the NMRS.