Trinity College Church Apse, (Between High Street And Jeffrey Street), Chalmer's Close

Trinity College Church Apse is a medieval choir and apse, originally built by John Halkerston between 1460 and 1531, demolished in 1848, and reconstructed on its present site in 1872 by architect John Lessels, who was able to incorporate approximately one third of the original stonework. The building is no longer in ecclesiastical use.

The structure is rectangular in plan, terminating in a buttressed apse, and is built of grey coursed sandstone ashlar. String courses and eaves courses are enriched with paterae, and the building features gargoyles and parapets to the north and south elevations. All windows have traceried openings with head-stopped hoodmoulds. Carved capital fragments and other carved stone pieces from the demolished original building are set into the walls of all elevations, and further fragments are placed within the curtilage.

The west elevation, facing Chalmer's Close, presents a single tall pointed gable containing a pointed loop-traceried window, with a cusped oculus above. The east elevation forms the apsed gable and features three tall plain lancets, the tracery of which was destroyed during the Reformation period when religious and political instability frequently made churches the focus of violence. Three staged buttresses with gableted, crocketed finials flank this elevation, along with niches at the window heads.

The south elevation is two storeys high with three bays. An entrance at the outer left is fitted with a two-leaf timber boarded door and a modern glazed timber vestibule. Pointed traceried windows are arranged as three clerestory windows above three aisle windows. The north elevation retains the surviving outline of a later pitched roof extension that projected just beyond the parapet; this Victorian addition, built by Lessels between 1872 and 1877, was demolished in 1964 and the north arcade filled in. The infill is of squared and snecked sandstone, and the remnants of two original arches are visible, infilled and rendered. Two niche canopies survive below the string course.

Throughout, glazing is plain frosted glass with closely spaced horizontal astragals. The roof is saddleback grey slate, with a coped gablehead stack, circular clay chimney cans, and cast iron rainwater goods.

The interior is two storeys and retains a tierceron ribbed and vaulted ceiling with richly carved bosses. Vault shafts rise from carved corbels, and slender wall shafts on carved corbels occupy the spandrels of the arcading. A string course runs above the tops of the arches. Two image brackets are positioned between the three tall apse lancets. The arcade piers are lozenge-shaped in plan, with capitals carved with foliage, shields and grotesque masks, and roll-moulded pointed arches. In the spandrels of the arcading, slender wall shafts rise from carved corbels.

On the inside of the west gable there is a chimneypiece whose 15th-century jambs are thought to have originated not from the church itself but from the nearby house of a John Hope, which stood between Chalmer's and Barringer's Closes and was being demolished at the time the new church was being built. The jambs feature half-lozenge shaped shafts (in plan) with fillets, scrollwork, and foliage. The capitals are each carved with two pairs of seated figures engaged in domestic activities, described as follows: first, a youth in the guise of a wanderer with a wallet at his side, seated on a bank talking with a young shepherdess, with a sporting lamb between them; second, the same pair seated closer together, hand in hand; third, a family group in which the parents are seated and apparently trying to pacify a crying child; fourth, each adult holding a child in arms. The hood above these jambs is 19th century. Comparable chimneypiece examples exist at the Palace of Linlithgow in the south range and at the Bishop's Palace at Dunblane. A reset blocked doorway in the north wall, formerly the doorway to the sacristy of the old church, encloses a large canopied piscina; the hood and basin are 15th or 16th century, while the jambs are 19th century.

The boundary enclosure to the south is a coped random rubble wall. To the west, a low coped wall with iron railings encloses a gravel area. Within the curtilage there is a collection of stone fragments from the original building, including capitals, fragments of a crossing pier, a doorhead, and a niche canopy. Additional carved stone fragments from Trinity College Church are held at Lady Stair's House Museum and Craigcook Castle.

The history of the building is of considerable significance. Trinity College Church was founded by Mary of Guelders as a memorial to her husband King James II, who was killed at the siege of Roxburgh in 1460. James Kennedy, Bishop of St Andrews, confirmed the foundation on 1 April 1462. The first provost was Sir Edward Bonkil (also spelled Boncle), and the foundation supported eight prebendaries and two singing boys, with an attached hospital for thirteen poor bedemen bound to pray for the souls of the foundress, her royal consort, and all their kin. After Mary of Guelders's death on 16 November 1463, building progress slowed dramatically, and the church — comprising a choir, transepts, and a partially constructed low saddleback crossing tower — was never fully completed.

The original site of Trinity College Church and Hospital lay below Calton Hill at the foot of the old Leith Wynd. To make way for the expansion of Waverley Station, all the buildings were demolished in 1848 under the supervision of David Bryce, and the numbered stones were stored on Calton Hill, an act carried out, in the words of a contemporary account, "notwithstanding the strongest remonstrances against so irreverent and sacrilegious an act." A calotype photograph by David Octavius Hill, taken shortly before demolition, shows the area where the hospital stood apparently being used as a stonemason's yard. Rebuilding of the choir and apse, without aisles, began in 1872 on the present site. Many of the numbered stones disappeared before they could be reused; those that were incorporated can still be seen in the walls.

The apse interior, and the carved stone fragments within the curtilage, represent some of the finest surviving evidence of 15th-century Scottish middle pointed or decorated Gothic architecture that was once embodied by the whole of Trinity College Church.

The Trinity Altarpiece associated with this foundation — a late 1470s diptych painted on both sides by Hugo van der Goes, known as the Trinity Panels and commissioned by Edward Bonkil — depicts the Holy Trinity; Bonkil with two angels; James III, King of Scots, his son James, and St Andrew; and Margaret of Denmark, Queen of Scots, with St George. It is thought that the work was originally a triptych, with a now-lost centre panel probably depicting the Virgin and Child, presumably destroyed during the Reformation. The panels are on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Scotland and are described as "the most important surviving altarpiece ever to have been commissioned for Scotland."