Lasswade, Old Parish Church

Parish Church, Lasswade.

In the old churchyard, which lies on the same steep bank above the village as the modern cemetery, but slightly to the eastward of it, is the roofless ruin of a north transeptal aisle. Now a mausoleum, it has survived the destruction of the rest of the early 13th-century church, which stood to southward and is now represented only by a portion of the south wall.

The aisle is an oblong structure of 17th century date and measures externally 23 feet from north to south by 20 ¼ feet from east to west. The walls are of rubble and the back-set dressings indicate that the structure was harled. The north gable contains a lofty quasi-Gothic window of "plate" tracery, comprising a lancet doublet, transomed, and having a vesica light in the mid spandrel. The jambs are grooved for glazing, the arrises are chamfered, and the margins back-set. High up in the gable is a small square window. The east wall contains the entrance, a lintelled doorway with splayed arrises on jambs and lintel. On the lateral walls a Renaissance cavetto returns as an eaves-course. This aisle was the burying place of the Clerks of Eldin. West of it lies the mausoleum of the Drummonds of Hawthornden, which was restored in 1892, when a medieval floriated finial cross, presumably from the old parish church, was erected above the entrance.

EFFIGY. South-east of the Eldin aisle there lies exposed to the weather a 15th-century effigy of a knightly figure clad in plate armour. The figure is lying on its back; the head rests on a folded napkin over an oblong cushion which has a tassel at each corner. The helmet is oval and is attached to a gorget. The body armour comprises a cuirass with laminated epaulieres, and brassarts with coudieres, which terminate at the wrists, leaving the hands, which are folded conventionally on the bosom, exposed. Below the cuirass, a skirt of steel taces protects the lower trunk, and at its edge is a richly ornamented baldric, below which on the dexter side are seen three points of a mail hauberk, and from which is suspended, on the sinister side, a short sword with slightly depressed quillons, serrated hilt, and rounded pommel. The lower limbs are clad in rounded cuisses, with shaped genouilliéres, codpiece, and keel-shaped jambards. The feet, which are mutilated, but appear to be clad in laminated sollerets, rest on a mutilated and diminutive lion couchant; at the feet there is a suggestion of a mantle. The effigy is 5 feet 11 ½ inches in length. It is fractured at the waist.

RECUMBENT SLAB. In a rubbish heap south of the Eldin aisle is a 16th-century slab, 6 ½ feet long and 2 feet broad, bearing an incised inscription in late Gothic lettering which has been read as HOC SUBEST SARCOPHAGO HONESTA MATRONA ELISABETHA BANNATIN QUÆ OBIIT [SESQUIMILLESIMO].* (Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xli. (1906-7), p. 84.) The inscription borders an incised shield, which bears in chief three cross crosslets fitchy above a stag's head cabossed.

SCULPTURED FRAGMENTS FROM CHURCH. Two sculptured fragments recovered from the ruins of the old church at Lasswade are now preserved in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland. The first, measuring 11 by 9 by 5inches, represents one of the side arms of a free-standing cross and bears sculptured designs on its two faces, with a marginal incision running round each edge of the fragment on its narrow sides. One of the faces shows a hand of the crucified Saviour with a nail through it, and the reverse the figure of a beast with its head turned backwards, open-mouthed, and with an elongated protruding tongue. The other is a portion of a slab of red sandstone, measuring16 inches in length by IO! inches wide and4 inches thick, sculptured in relief on one face only, showing the body and legs of an animal with the tail curved well over the back and with a diced or checky pattern in two rows on the sinister side. Cf. Early Christ. Monts., pp.423-4.

RCAHMS 1929, visited 7 June 1920.