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Edinburgh, Canongate, St John's Land
Preceptory (Medieval)(Possible)
Site Name Edinburgh, Canongate, St John's Land
Classification Preceptory (Medieval)(Possible)
Alternative Name(s) Preceptory Of The Knights Of St. John Of Jerusalem
Canmore ID 52234
Site Number NT27SE 21
NGR NT 26362 73729
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/52234
- Council Edinburgh, City Of
- Parish Edinburgh (Edinburgh, City Of)
- Former Region Lothian
- Former District City Of Edinburgh
- Former County Midlothian
NT27SE 21 262 736
The Knights of St John (Knights Hospitallers) held land in the Canongate, situated between St Mary's Wynd and St John's Pend. Referred to in charters as St John's Land, the property had been disposed of by 1437. There is no record of a house having stood here.
RCAHMS 1951; I B Cowan and D E Easson 1976.
This property was probably situated within the area bounded by St Mary's Street (or Wynd) and St John's Street, ie. centred NT 2628 7362, though this was not substantiated.
Visited by OS (JLD) 26 December 1953.
NT 2635 7375 A watching brief was held on the construction of a disabled access ramp to the N of Old Moray House, Canongate, and during refurbishment of the adjacent St John's Land building. A shallow trench was excavated into archaeological levels after the removal of a modern raised flower bed. The top fill of a ?circular pit of 16th/17th-century date was exposed, possibly 2m in diameter. This was cut by the foundations of a mortar-bonded sandstone wall, on a NE-SW orientation, 0.7m wide. An internal wall in St John's Land was revealed during alterations, and shown to have been external originally, with windows giving onto St John Street, now roofed over as a pend.
Sponsor: University of Edinburgh.
D Henderson 1999
Publication Account (1951)
75. Preceptory of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.
The Knights of St. John, who received the Templars' lands on that Order's dissolution in 1309, held lands both in Edinburgh and in the Canongate. It is worth noting that their Canongate property, which extended from St. Mary's Wynd to St. John's Pend and was therefore within the territorial boundaries of the burgh of Canongate, did not legally form part of it. It was termed St. John's Land, and after 1437 was referred to in charters as being within the liberties of Edinburgh. The large size of this property suggests that a House stood somewhere upon it, but of this no record has survived; in Edinburgh, however, a "temple chapel" existed in 1500 in the West Bow (1). The leasing of a piece of "waste temple land" in 1426 (2) suggests that the Hospitallers vacated their quarters in the Canongate at about this date; and by 1437 it is clear that these lands had been disposed of (3).
RCAHMS 1951
(1) Acts of the Lords of Council in Civil Causes, pp.457 f. But the remains noted by Macgibbon and Ross (Cast. & Dom. Arch., iv, p. 414) cannot have been part of this structure as they are purely domestic and are not of an earlier date than the turn of the1 6th and 17th centuries. (2) Reg. Cart. St. Egid,p . 47. (3) Ibid., p. 62. "Lople" is no doubt a misreading of the word “hospitale” written in a contracted form.
