Edinburgh, St Leonard's Chapel And Hospital

165. Hospital of St. Leonard, St. Leonard's Hill.

The Hospital and Chapel of St. Leonard formerly stood on the high ground now occupied by the James Clark Technical School. The arrangement of the buildings is unknown, but the Hospital appears to have lain to the S. of the Chapel (1). Both Chapel and Hospital belonged to Holyrood Abbey, and it is probable that they took the place of an earlier hermitage (2), which would have been conveniently placed here for sheltering travellers arriving from the south after the closing of the town gates. The Hospital and Chapel were in existence in 1271, at which date the Serving Brothers of the Hospital were in litigation with the Rector of Hailes (3). In 1334 a chaplain was appointed by Edward 111 (4); and after the expulsion of the English the Chapel and Hospital seem to have passed into the possession of Edinburgh, as in 1390 the Abbey obtained from Robert III a charter affirming that both belonged to the Abbot and Canons of Holyrood (5). Neither the Liber Cartarum Sancte Crucis nor the Chronicon of Holyrood contains any mention of the foundation until 1493, when Abbot Bellenden granted a new charter (6) providing for the restoration of the buildings, which were evidently ruinous, and for the endowment of the Hospital with the means of maintaining six old men. Both before and after this date the chaplain had as his manse a house standing immediately N. of the great gate of the Abbey (7). The Chapel comes into notice again in 1528, when it was the scene of a meeting of the Douglases, in conspiracy to murder James V (8); and once more in 1650, when Colonel Lawers occupied the hill in the course of the fighting against Cromwell (9). How or when the career of the foundation ended is not known; its site may be that shown by a mark which appears on a map drawn about 1730 (10), and the remains of the Chapel walls, then 4 ft. high, were destroyed in 1854 (11). During the demolition many skeletons were found both inside and outside the Chapel precincts; but the bodies found outside the Chapel are quite unlikely to have been those of malefactors hanged on the gibbet of East Burgh Muir, as Forrest supposed, seeing that the gibbet stood at the head of the modern East Preston Street, at a considerable distance from this site.

RCAHMS 1951

(1) Forrest, An Account of the History and Antiquities of St. Leonard's, Edinburgh, its Chapel and Hospital, p. 31. (2) The names of two crofts belonging to the Hospital, "Hermits" and "Terrars," or "Termits," which occupied part of the site of the railway coal-depot of St. Leonard's, may well represent the words "terras eremiti" occurring in some lost charter. (3) Registrum de Dunfermelyn, p. 137. (4) Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, iii, No. 1130. (5) Calendar of the Papal Registers, xii, p. 734. (6) Reg. Mag. Sig., 1424-1513, No. 2192. (7) Ibid. (8) Acts Pari. Scot., ii, pp. 362, 364. (9) Balfour, Annales of Scotland, iv, pp. 87 f. (10) "The Early Views and Maps of Edinburgh," in Scottish Geographical Magazine, xxxv, Old Edinburgh Maps No. 2. 11 Forrest, op. cit., pp. 24 ff.