Trinity College Kirk

Coordinates: 55°57′10″N 3°11′10″W / 55.95278°N 3.18611°W / 55.95278; -3.18611
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Trinity College Kirk c. 1647
Engraved colour drawing of the church, done in 1825
Watercolour from the early 1840s depicting the church from the north side
1848 calotype by Hill & Adamson, shortly before its destruction
Plan of Trinity College Church 1814
New Trinity College Church on Jeffrey Street (with reconstruction of the choir and apse to the rear) in 1895
Trinity College Kirk on Jeffrey Street showing the new church to front with reconstructed "Apse" to rear - new church demolished 1960s for office development - now a hotel.
North Aisle
National Gallery of Scotland
, Edinburgh

Trinity College Kirk was a

Mary of Gueldres in memory of her husband, King James II who had been killed at the siege of Roxburgh Castle that year.[1] Queen Mary was interred in the church, until her coffin was moved to Holyrood Abbey in 1848.[2]

The original church design was never completed. Only the apse, choir (with aisles) and transepts were completed.[3]

The church was located in the valley between the

Waverley Station
on its site. Although its stones were numbered in anticipation of rebuilding and were stored in a yard on Calton Hill, by 1872, when a replacement church was built on the newly formed Jeffrey Street, only a third were left which were used to construct a version of the choir and apse which was the hall of the new church.

Style

The church was built of local sandstone from a quarry which was discovered only 500m to the west at the site of the Scott Monument on Princes Street. It was created in the cosmopolitan Scottish late Gothic style.[4] As was the taste of the time, water was discharged from the roof via gargoyles which were said to crouch in agony under the weight of their load. Unusually it is said the church had several monkeys within its decorations.[5]

Foundation

The foundation of the college was for a provost, eight prebendaries and two clerks each being assigned particular benefices and land for their support. Income was derived from several sources in Scotland, either by the endowment of

Soutra, Fala, Lampetlaw, Kirkurd, Ormiston and Gogar.[6]

Early history

The church and hospital of

bedesmen in the Soutra hospital.[7] John Halkerston was made Master of Works.[8]

In August 1463 Pope

Pius II declared by Papal bull that religious visitors to the church during the feast of the Holy Trinity on 10 July and the following eight days, over the next five years, would be granted a plenary indulgence, if they contributed to the fund for completion of the building according to their financial ability.[9] The money was to be put in a locked box with two keys kept by the Provost and the Papal Collector for Scotland. A third of the receipts were to be given to the Catholic church for its general work.[10]

The church was famed for its

James IV, and his wife, Margaret of Denmark. The donor, the first Provost of the Trinity foundation, Edward Bonkil, and his coat of arms also feature.[11]

Early records of the construction of the church are lost. In 1463 a steward of Mary of Gueldres,

indulgences to visitors to the church and college on the feast of Holy Trinity and Octave who made contributions to the work.[13]
After Dingwall's death in 1533, the masons pursued his legacy left for completing the work. Only the apse, choir and transepts were finished. A nearby house, demolished in 1642, was called "Dingwall Castle" probably after the Provost Master.

After the

Regent Moray to the Provost of Edinburgh, Simon Preston of Craigmillar who then passed it to the community of Edinburgh for the purposes of a hospital for the poor and infirm. Building materials for alterations were to be brought from the demolished Blackfriars monastery to the south. The master of work for building the new hospital, Adam Fullarton, sold stones, lime, and sand in the Blackfriars kirkyard to the masons Thomas Jackson and Murdoch Walker.[14] In April 1568 the council sent four men, including Nicol Uddert, to find charitable donations for the hospital.[15] The provosts (ending with Robert Pont
) continued to have a financial interest in the structure until 1585.

For about seventeen years it appears that the church was the church for the hospital until in 1584 it was made the official church serving the north-east quarter of Edinburgh. This lasted until closure.[16]

From 1813 to 1833, the minister of Trinity College was the Rev. Walter Tait. In 1833 it was reported that he "had given countenance to certain extraordinary interruptions of public worship in his church on the Monday immediately after the communion by a person pretending to speak in the spirit". That person was said to be 'the apostle' Thomas Carlyle. Tait was deposed in that year and went on to become the pastor of the Catholic Apostolic Church in Edinburgh, until his death in 1841.[17]

Dismantling and reconstruction

Trinity Apse from Chalmers Close
Ceiling of Trinity Apse

In 1844 the North British Railway received its Act of Parliament giving it the power of compulsory purchase over property in the area of its proposed railway station. This led to the demolition of the Trinity College Kirk and its Hospital, the nearby Lady Glenorchy's Church and the Orphan Hospital of Edinburgh. The fairly unique plan for Trinity College Kirk required that the stones be numbered prior to demolition and then stored to await a suitable site for rebuilding.[18]

The North British Railway Company paid £18000 in compensation to the owner, Edinburgh Town Council. The council proved obstructive in releasing the funds for a new church, "hoping that the congregation would disappear" i.e. be absorbed into other churches. However, A House of Lords decision reversed a Court of Session ruling that all £18000 must be spent on the church, and limited the cost of the rebuild to £7000.[16]

The

Waverley Station. David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson photographed the kirk before its demise.[19][20]

As most of the congregation left, joining the Free Church, those remaining in the established Church of Scotland following the

St Giles Cathedral
.

The chosen site for the replacement church was on the newly created Jeffrey Street which had been developed in terms of the City Improvement Schemes. The church was the first building on the street.

The church opened for worship to the long-displaced congregation in October 1877 and held up to 900 people. The medieval font from the original church was repositioned in the church just before reopening.[21]

The new church fronting Jeffrey Street was wholly new and was designed by John Lessels. The remaining salvaged stones (about one third) from the original College Church were used to construct a version of the original choir and apse (called the Trinity Apse) attached to the rear of the new church and served as the hall of the church. In the 1960s, Lessels' church was demolished for an office development leaving the Trinity Apse in isolation on Chalmers Close. The office development has since been converted to a hotel.

In the 1980s Trinity Apse housed the Edinburgh Brass Rubbing Centre, under the auspices of the City of Edinburgh Council.

The rebuilt Apse, together with carved stone fragments and the boundary wall, is registered as a Category A listed building.[22]

Statuary and stone ornament from the church stand in the gardens of Craigcrook Castle in west Edinburgh (but it is unclear if these were moved at the point of demolition or "salvaged" during the period of being dismantled).[23]

List of provosts

  • Sir Edward Bonkle or Bonkel: 1462 – 1495 x 1496
  • James Oliphant: 1499 – 1525
  • John Brady: 1502 – 1525
  • John Dingwall: 1525 – 1532 x 1533 (given a seat in the Scottish parliament in 1526)
  • William Cunningham: 1533 – 1539
  • Thomas Erskine: 1539
  • Robert Erskine: 1539 – 1540
  • George Clapperton: 1540 – 1566
  • Laurence Clapperty: 1566 – 1571 x 1572
  • Robert Pont: 1572 – 1585, who was paid 300 merks to resign the office to the town.[24]

Source: Watt & Murray Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae

List of ministers

Note: One of the founding members of the

Moderators of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
came from the Trinity College Kirk:

Second charge

Not only was the church large enough to need two ministers but (more unusually) the second charge ministers often obtained fame in their own right including at least one rising to be moderator. This is unique to Trinity College Church. This second charge was operational from 1597 to 1782, when the building of

St Andrew's Church
in the New Town took a large section of the congregation, no longer necessitating second services. Notable second charges were:

Notable burials

In the floor of the original kirk:

See also

  • Berwick Castle, most of which was also demolished in 1847, to allow for the construction of the Edinburgh – Newcastle railway

Notes

  1. doi:10.3366/shr.2023.0611
  2. ^ "Notes on the disputed tomb of Mary of Gueldres" (PDF).
  3. ^ "Edinburgh, Leith Wynd, Trinity College Church And Hospital". Canmore. Historic Environment Scotland. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  4. ^ Angie Brown, 'Mystery carvings came from dismantled royal church', BBC News, 9 April 2023
  5. ^ James Grant, Old and New Edinburgh, vol. 2, p.304
  6. ^ James Grant, Cassell's Old and New Edinburgh, vol. 2, p.303–304
  7. ^ a b c Cowan & Easson, Medieval Religious Houses, p. 192
  8. ^ Perth: The Archaeology and Development of a Scottish Burgh – David P. Bowler, Tayside and Fife Archaeological Committee, Perth, 2004, p. 21
  9. ^ Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 23.
  10. ^ James David Marwick, Charters relating to the city of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1871), pp. 115-119.
  11. ^ Jill Harrison, 'Fresh Perspectives on Hugo van Goes' Portrait of Margaret of Denmark and the Trinity Altarpiece', The Court Historian, 24:2 (2019), pp. 120-138
  12. ^ George Burnett, Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, vol. 7 (Edinburgh, 1884), pp. liii, 167-8.
  13. ^ James David Marwick, Charters relating to the city of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1871), pp. 209-210.
  14. ^ James David Marwick, Extracts from the records of the Burgh of Edinburgh: 1557-1571 (Edinburgh, 1875), pp. 242-4, 246.
  15. ^ James David Marwick, Extracts from the records of the Burgh of Edinburgh: 1557-1571 (Edinburgh, 1875), pp. 247-8.
  16. ^ a b Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae; by Hew Scott
  17. ISBN 1-873644-18-3
  18. ^ Grant's Old and New Edinburgh vol 1
  19. Burlington Magazine
    , Vol. 126, No. 981
  20. ^ "Calotype of Trinity College Church". City of Edinburgh Council – Capital Collections. Edinburgh.
  21. ^ Grant's Old and New Edinburgh vol.2 p.287
  22. ^ "Venues". 31 October 2017.
  23. ^ Scottish Garden Buildings by Tim Buxbaum p.64
  24. ^ James David Marwick, Extracts from the records of the Burgh of Edinburgh: 1573-1589 (Edinburgh, 1882), p. 433.

References

External links

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55°57′10″N 3°11′10″W / 55.95278°N 3.18611°W / 55.95278; -3.18611

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