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Restalrig / Lestalrig Parish Church
- Dedication: Our Lady
- Diocese of St Andrews
- Deanery of Linlithgow
- NT 28337 74483
Summary description
The lower storey of a unique and finely detailed hexagonal aisle associated with a college founded in 1487 projects from the south side of a basically rectangular church. Both were destroyed in 1560. The church was restored in 1836, with a west porch added in 1884 and a north vestry block in 1962. The lower storey of the aisle was restored in 1906-07.
Historical outline
The earliest surviving reference to the parish kirk of Restalrig appears to be its naming in the accounts of the papal tax-collector in Scotland in 1275, when the rector of the church of ‘Lastalric’ was recorded as having paid three merks in tax.(2) The first reference to a named incumbent occurs in 1350 when William Livingston, who held the right of presentation, provided Bartholomew of Rutherglen to the church, which was described as void by the death of the previous incumbent, who was named only as ‘David’.(3) In 1414 the rector was William Stevenson, later to be bishop of Dunkeld, when he was given an indult to choose a confessor.(4) He was succeeded in 1425 by John Cameron, who was keeper of the privy seal for King James I.(5)
By the 1430s at the latest the parish church appears to have been in the gift of the Logans of Restalrig. A supplication to the pope dated 13 December 1433 narrated that Robert Logan, knight and patron, and Duncan Petit, rector of Restalrig, considered the high number of parishioners to be an imprediment to the rector’s suitable rule of the church and an obstacle to his unaided exercise of the cure of souls. They had therefore decided that a perpetual vicar should be instituted to assist the rector, and would endow a perpetual vicarage from the goods of the rector. Logan had then presented William Petit, described as a priest of the diocese of Glasgow and presumably – but not stated – a kinsman of the rector, for institution to the vicarage, but the bishop as ordinary had refused to institute him. To ensure that this refusal did not bring an end to their proposal, Logan and Duncan Petiti supplicated the pope for confirmation of their proposal in respect of the vicarage and that he would provide William to the vicarage, to which five merks revenue had been assigned.(6)
Robert Logan’s 1433 supplication could be taken to suggest that the parish church was already a substantial establishment serving a large population. This is to some extent supported by a royal confirmation at mortmain under the Great Seal dated 3 November 1477, whereby King James III, for the salvation of his own soul, and of Queen Margaret his wife, etc, mortified to his ‘orator’ and chaplain sir Patrick Hog, for life, and towards the perpetual maintenance of a chaplain celebrating at an altar founded by the king in ‘the upper chapel’ in the parish church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Restalrig, an extensive endowment of annual rents from properties in Leith, Restalrig, Edinburgh, and Fife.(7) This reference to the ‘upper chapel’ probably refers to the upper storey of the octagonal structure nowadays known popularly as ‘St Triduana’s Well’. This may, in fact, be the ‘altar of the aisle of St Triduana’, described in 1492 as located in the south aisle of the parish church and served by Robert Gourlaw.(8) Although James was to re-use this endowment in 1487 as part of his founding endowment of the collegiate church of Restalrig,(9) the parish church itself remained unappropriated in the patronage of the Logans and independent of the new establishment with which it thereafter shared a site.(10)
While the sharing of the building with the collegiate church meant that the parish church occupied part of the magnificent structure raised on the site, it also had profound consequences for the parish church at the Reformation. On 21 December 1560 the church of Restalrig ‘as a monument of idolatory be rasit and utterlie casit downe and destroyed’ at the orders of the General Assembly, the parishioners instead to go to church of Leith.(11) Andrew Spicer has suggested that the motive may have been John Knox’s personal dislike of the dean of the collegiate church of Restalrig John Sinclair.(12) Although his church had been effectively destroyed, the parsonage, held at that time by Mr John Logan, parson, was valued annually at 300 merks.(13)
Notes
1. Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scotorum, ii, 1424-1513, ed J B Paul (Edinburgh, 1882), no.1329 [hereafter RMS, ii].
2. A I Dunlop (ed), ‘Bagimond’s Roll: Statement of the Tenths of the Kingdom of Scotland’, Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, vi (1939), 35.
3. Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, iii, 1342-1362, eds W H Bliss and C Johnson (London, 1897), 385.
4. Calendar of Papal Letters to Scotland of Benedict XIII of Avignon 1394-1419, ed F McGurk (Scottish History Society, 1976), 305.
5. Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, ii, 1423-1428, ed A I Dunlop (Scottish History Society, 1956), 93.
6. Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, iv, 1433-1447, eds A I Dunlop and D MacLauchlan (Glasgow, 1983), no 111.
8. Protocol Book of James Young, 1485-1515, ed G Donaldson (Scottish Record Society, 1952), no.534.
9. Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, xiv, 1471-1484, ed J A Twemlow (London, 1955), 211-213.
10. Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, xvi,@@@ no.506.
11. NRS Records of the Synod of Fife, 1610-1636, CH2/154/1, fols. 46-47, Acts and Proceedings of the General Assemblies of the Kirk of Scotland, i, 5.
12. A Spicer, Calvinist Churches in Early Modern Europe (Manchester, 2007), 43 n.14.
13. J Kirk (ed), The Books of Assumption of the Thirds of Benefices (Oxford, 1995), 119.
Summary of relevant documentation
Medieval
Synopsis of Cowan’s Parishes: Not connected to the collegiate church of that name, it is listed as an independent parsonage in Bagimond’s Roll. The church remained unappropriated, with the patronage of the Logans of Restalrig, from 1433 to Reformation.(1)
1350 William Livingstone presents Bartholomew de Rutherglen to the church void by the death of David (no surname).(2)
1414-25 William Stevenson (later bishop of Dunblane), succeeded by John Cameron (keeper of the privy seal).(3)
1433 Complaint by Robert Logan (patron), and Duncan Petit the rector who ‘considering the parishioners so numerous that the rector was unable to rule it and exercise cure of souls alone’, decided that a perpetual vicar should assist the rector, created from the fruits of the rectory (vicarage value 5 marks). They presented William Petit, who was refused by the bishop of St Andrews.(4)
1487 New college erected ‘in the bounds of the parish church of Restalrig’.(5)
1495 Litigation on death of patron Robert Logan and rector William Leinton, Nicholas Gudland eventually successful against John Wanker and Henry White, who also asserted they had been presented by the late patron.(6)
1560 (21 December) Church of Restalrig [parish or college?] ‘as a monument of idolatory be rasit and utterlie casit downe and destroyed’ at the orders of the General Assembly. Parishioners to go to church of Leith instead.(7) Spicer suggests the motive may have been John Knox’s dislike of the dean of Restalrig John Sinclair.(8)
Altars and chaplaincies
St Triduana
1492 Robert Gourlaw, chaplain of the altar of the aisle of St Triduana, in the south aisle, of the parish church of Restalrig.(9)
1506 Walter Greg is chaplain.(10)
Post-medieval
Books of assumption of thirds of benefices and Accounts of the collectors of thirds of benefices: The Parish church parsonage held by John Logan, valued at £247 6s 8d.(11)
Account of Collectors of Thirds of Benefices (G. Donaldson): Third of parsonage £82 8s 10 2/3d.(12)
1570 ‘The great mansion of the dean of Restalrig and the houses of the prebends with lands, houses, gardens and orchards adjoined’, granted to William Lauder, brother of the late dean.(13)
[United with South Leith after the Reformation]
New Statistical Account of Scotland (1845): ‘The church was ‘razed and cast down’ in 1560. Nothing left but the walls. It was completely restored and renovated in 1836’.(14)
Notes
1. Cowan, The parishes of medieval Scotland,170.
3. CPL, Ben, 305, CSSR, ii, 93.
7. NRS Records of the Synod of Fife, 1610-1636, CH2/154/1, fols. 46-47, Acts and Proceedings of the General Assemblies of the Kirk of Scotland, i, p. 5.
8. Spicer, Calvinist Churches in Early Modern Europe, p. 43, nt.14.
9. Prot Bk of James Young, 1485-1515, no. 534.
10. Prot Bk of James Young, 1485-1515, no. 1641.
11. Kirk, The books of assumption of the thirds of benefices, 119.
12. Donaldson, Accounts of the collectors of thirds of benefices, 27.
13. Prot Bk of Gilbert Grote, 1552-1573, no. 289.
14. New Statistical Account of Scotland, (1845), i, 775.
Bibliography
NRS Records of the Synod of Fife, 1610-1636, CH2/154/1.
Acts and Proceedings of the General Assemblies of the Kirk of Scotland, 1839-45, ed. T. Thomson (Bannatyne Club), Edinburgh.
Calendar of entries in the Papal registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland; Papal letters, 1893-, ed. W.H. Bliss, London.
Calendar of entries in the Papal registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland; Papal Petitions, 1893-, ed. W.H. Bliss, London.
Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome 1423-28, 1956, ed. A.I. Dunlop, (Scottish History Society) Edinburgh.
Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome 1433-47, 1983, ed. A.I. Dunlop and D MacLauchlan, Glasgow.
Cowan, I.B., 1967, The parishes of medieval Scotland, (Scottish Record Society), Edinburgh.
Donaldson, G., 1949, Accounts of the collectors of thirds of benefices, (Scottish History Society), Edinburgh.
Kirk, J., 1995, The books of assumption of the thirds of benefices, (British Academy) Oxford.
New Statistical Account of Scotland, 1834-45, Edinburgh and London.
Protocol Book of James Young, 1485-1515, 1952, ed. G. Donaldson (Scottish Record Society), Edinburgh.
Protocol Book of Mr Gilbert Grote, 1552-1573, 1914, ed. W. Angus (Scottish Record Society), Edinburgh.
Spicer, A., 2007, Calvinist Churches in Early Modern Europe, Manchester.
Statistical Account of Scotland, 1791-9, ed. J. Sinclair, Edinburgh.
Architectural description
The parish evidently remained unappropriated throughout its medieval history, and from no later than 1433 it was under the patronage of the Logans of Restalrig.(1) A college was founded adjacent to the church in 1487, which was apparently institutionally unconnected with the parish.(2) The church was destroyed on the orders of the first General Assembly on 21 December 1560,(3) and the parishioners ordered instead to worship in Leith. However, it was restored to the designs of William Burn in 1836, as a chapel of ease to South Leith Church.(4) A west porch was added to it in 1884, and a low vestry block on the north side was added in 1962. The lower storey of the adjacent collegiate chapel was restored and capped by a pyramidal roof to the designs of Thomas Ross in 1906-7.(5)
A plan of the ruined church of 1813 in the papers of General Hutton shows that the medieval building was a rectangular structure with diagonal buttresses at the eastern angles and buttresses defining the bays along the south flank.(6) This is partly confirmed in a sketch by James Skene of 1818, which in addition shows two light windows with a quatrefoil at their heads between the buttresses of the south flank.(7) Although no west wall is shown on either of those drawings, there is good evidence that Burn rebuilt it on its medieval line, and it is also clear that in most respects he restored the masonry to its medieval form.(8)
Excavations carried out in 1961-2 indicated that there had been proposals to enlarge the church in a number of ways.(9) One of those proposals was for a large lateral projection on the north side of the church, of which fragmentary footings were found when the foundations of the new vestry block were being dug. It was speculated that this structure could have been a sacristy, although an alternative possibility might be a family aisle.
More enigmatic findings suggest that some other proposals for enlargement were part of an aborted plan to make the parish church a more fitting neighbour for the collegiate chapel by the addition of an aisle down each side. A large clustered-shaft respond to the east of the north-east buttress has the appearance of an arcade respond for a north aisle, while a single shaft base projecting from the north east face of the collegiate aisle might be interpreted as the wall shaft of a south aisle.
It may also be that preparations were being made to cut arcade arches through the south wall, since there is a relieving arch in the second bay from the east. However, it is evident that these proposals can never have been taken far. One other enigmatic feature that should be mentioned is what appears to be the lower courses of a jamb set into the south-east buttress, but the function of this clearly secondary feature cannot be easily explained.
The collegiate chapel that was attached to the parish church, is architecturally one of the most unusual of such foundations. Its main element took the form of a two-storeyed hexagon close to the south-west corner of the existing rectangular parish church. Construction must have been well advanced by 1477, when there is a record in the Register of the Great Seal that James III had endowed a chaplainry in the upper chapel.(10)
This was referred to as the King’s Chapel in 1486–7, when payments were recorded in the Exchequer Rolls for roofing,(11) and papal permission for the erection of a college dedicated to the Trinity and St Mary was confirmed on 13 November 1487.(12) Bishop John Fraser of Ross (1497–1507), who was dean of the college between 1487 and 1497, endowed a chaplainry of St Triduana in the aisle dedicated to her,(13) which was presumably the lower chapel.
The primary function of this collegiate foundation is unclear. The Aberdeen breviary says that Restalrig was the burial place of the highly apocryphal St Triduana, one of the virgins who accompanied St Regulus on his journey to Scotland with the relics of St Andrew. It has been suggested that the lower storey of the chapel was some form of well house linked with her cult, which was particularly associated with diseases of the eyes. In support of this, the floor level within the lower chapel is well below the water table, and it may be that water could have been conducted into a cistern, one possible location for which could be a recess in the north wall.
It should also be noted that a well-head that used to be in the vicinity of the chapel, but that has been re-located to Holyrood Park, where it is now known as St Margaret’s Well, is covered by a miniature version of the vault that covers the lower chapel. In addition, account must be taken of the fact that a hexagonal form was often favoured for buildings associated with water, such as the conduit buildings and lavatoria in a number of Cistercian cloisters.
Against that view, there is nothing in the records of the cult of St Triduana that suggests it involved any form of spring, and thus, while it cannot be ruled out that one of the chapel’s functions was that of a well house, there is no irrefutable support for this. More recently it has been suggested that the shape of the chapel could have been intended to express a function as an enlarged pyx for the adoration of the consecrated host, and the haste with which the General Assembly ordered the destruction of the chapel in 1560 could indeed suggest that its functions were regarded as especially idolatrous by the reformers.
Only the lower level of the completed building at Restalrig survives, through having been adapted as a burial vault over a long period. Externally there were buttresses at all of the exposed angles, and there were windows in the three walls that faced southwards; these windows have three-centred arches and their three lights simply extend up to the arch.
Internally, on the evidence of a small number of surviving ribs, it has been suggested that the vault over the principal chapel at the upper level was not supported by a central pier, but this is not certain. The lower chapel has retained its vault, and this rises from a central clustered-shaft pier with six filleted shafts, and from wall shafts at the angles that are composed of four filleted shafts. Above the pier is a cone of six ribs that rise to meet the angles of a hexagonal ridge rib, those angles being directed towards the faces rather than the junctions of the walls. The ribs from the central pier are then extended across horizontally to the apices of the wall ribs, while the two ribs that spring from each of the wall shafts meet their counterparts from adjacent springers at the angles of the ridge rib.
On plan this results in a star-like pattern created by three revolving equilateral triangles, a form of geometrical manipulation that had fascinated several generations of masons. Earlier examples of that interest had been seen in both France and England, in the late thirteenth century Montjoies of St Louis and in some of the Eleanor Crosses erected by Edward I in memory of his queen.(14) Nearer in date to Restalrig, more complex variants are to be found in the speculative designs of a number of the leading fifteenth-century central European master masons, as in a design for a tabernacle in Basel Museum, or in a fantastic plan in the Vienna Akademie der Bildenden Künste.(15) Whilst too much should not be made of this, it is a reminder that masons working in Scotland shared an interest in the geometrical processes of design with their fellows across Europe.
Since we know so little of the chapel’s intended functions, and we have no more than a very incomplete idea of its original architectural forms, it is hazardous to attempt speculation on the likely sources for its design. The possibility has been aired above that some inspiration for its design could have been drawn from either monastic lavatoria or from the precious pyxes in which the consecrated host might be reserved, and both of those could indeed have been factors.
Nevertheless, the most likely architectural prototypes for a building of this kind are the centralised chapter houses that are to be found at considerable numbers of English cathedrals, monastic houses and collegiate churches, and which Scottish patrons had earlier chosen to follow at the abbeys of Inchcolm and Holyrood and the cathedral of Elgin. At the start of the last quarter of the fifteenth century, a time when Scottish relationships with England were rather closer than they had been for a considerable time, it could well have been that there was a renewed willingness to take some ideas from south of the border.
In suggesting this, account must certainly be taken of the fact that the chapel is of hexagonal plan and, with exceptions at King’s Lynn in Norfolk(16) and possibly at Romsey in Hampshire, this does not appear to have been a greatly favoured plan form for English centralised chapter houses. But such partial independence of approach is not inconsistent with what we find in Scottish architecture at this time, and the essential similarities with large numbers of English chapter houses are particularly evident in the prominence of the central pier and the cone of vaulting it supports at Restalrig.
Drawing inspiration from a distant source did not mean either that the source had to be followed slavishly, or that the specific architectural vocabulary had to be copied. The best Scottish masons were fully capable of working out complex multi-sourced solutions in their own idiom, and the details we find at Restalrig appear to be the work of a native mason who was both highly creative and geometrically sophisticated.
Notes
1. Ian B. Cowan, The Parishes of Medieval Scotland (Scottish Record Society), 1967, pp. 170-71.
2. Ian B. Cowan and David E. Easson, Medieval Religious Houses, Scotland, London and New York, 2nd ed. 1976, pp. 224-25.
3. Acts and Proceedings of the General Assemblies of the Kirk of Scotland, T. Thomson (ed.), (Bannatyne Club), Edinburgh, 1839–45, pt. 1, no 5.
4. Francis H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland, Edinburgh, vol. 6, 1885, pp. 251-52.
5. Thomas Ross, ‘St Triduana’s Well-House’, Transactions of the Scottish Ecclesiological Society, vol. 2, 1910–11, pp. 238-46.
6. National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS 30.5.23, 85b.
7. Edinburgh City Libraries PYDA/2406/2271, reproduced as pl. XXXVIII in Iain MacIvor, ‘The King’s Chapel at Restalrig and St Triduana’s Aisle’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 96, 1962–3, pp. 247-63.
8. Descriptions of the church include: David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1896–7, vol. 3, pp. 475–9; Ross, 1910–11; Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Inventory of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1951, pp. 253–54; MacIvor, 1962–3; Christopher Wilson in John Gifford, Colin McWilliam and David Walker, The Buildings of Scotland, Edinburgh, Harmondsworth, 1984, pp. 660–61; A.A. Macdonald, ‘The Chapel at Restalrig: Royal Folly or Venerable Shrine’, A Palace in the Wild: Essays on Vernacular Culture and Humanism in Late-medieval and Renaissance Scotland , ed. L.A.J.R. Houewe et al., Leuven, 2000, pp. 27-59.
10. Register of the Great seal of Scotland, ed. J.M. Thomson et al., Edinburgh, 1882-1914, vol. 2, no 1329.
11. The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, ed. J. Stuart et al., Edinburgh, 1878-1908, vol. 9, p. 540.
12. Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, ed. W.H. Bliss et al, London, 1893-, vol. 14, pp. 211–13.
13. Charters of the Hospital of Soltre, p. 280.
14. Robert Branner, ‘The Montjoies of St Louis’, in Douglas Fraser, Howard Hibbard and Milton J. Lewine (eds), Essays in the history of architecture presented to Rudolf Wittkower, London, 1967, pp. 13–16; John Zukowsky, ‘Montjoies and Eleanor Crosses reconsidered’, Gesta, vol. 13, 1974, pp. 39–44; Nicola Coldstream, ‘The commissioning and design of the Eleanor Crosses’ in D. Parsons (ed.), Eleanor of Castille 1290–1990, Stamford, 1991, pp. 55–67.
15. François Bucher, ‘Design in Gothic Architecture: a preliminary assessment’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 27, 1968, pp. 49–71.
16. ‘The summer meeting at King’s Lynn’, Archaeological Journal, vol. 89, 1933, pl. VI.
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