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

Trinity College Church Apse, Chalmer's Close, Edinburgh

This is the surviving choir and apse of Trinity College Church, a remarkable fragment of 15th-century Scottish Gothic architecture with a complex and poignant history. The apse was originally built by John Halkerston between 1460 and 1531, demolished in 1848, and painstakingly rebuilt on its present site in 1872 by the architect John Lessels. Roughly a third of the original medieval stonework was incorporated into the rebuilt structure, and numbered stones from the original building can still be identified in the walls, though many disappeared before they could be reused.

The building is rectangular in plan with a buttressed apse, constructed in grey coursed sandstone ashlar. The string and eaves courses are enriched with paterae, and gargoyles project from the walls. Parapets run along the north and south elevations. All windows are traceried and have head-stopped hoodmoulds. Carved capital fragments and other carved stonework salvaged from the demolished original building have been set into the walls on all elevations, and further pieces are placed within the grounds.

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 end. It has three tall plain lancets — the tracery of which was destroyed, likely during the religious and political upheaval of the Reformation period — and three staged buttresses with gableted, crocketed finials. Niches are positioned at the window heads.

The south elevation is two storeys high and three bays wide. The entrance is at the outer left and has a two-leaf timber boarded door with a modern glazed timber vestibule. There are six pointed traceried windows: three forming a clerestory and three at aisle level.

The north elevation retains the surviving outline of a later pitched roof extension that projected just beyond the parapet. This area is infilled with squared and snecked sandstone. The remnants of two original arches are visible, now infilled and rendered, and two niche canopies survive below the string course. This Victorian extension, added by Lessels between 1872 and 1877, was demolished in 1964 and the north arcade subsequently filled in.

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

Interior

The interior is two storeys high. The ceiling is tierceron ribbed and vaulted, with richly carved bosses. Vault shafts rise from carved corbels, and slender wall shafts on carved corbels are set in the spandrels of the arcading. A string course runs above the tops of the arches, and 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 the pointed arches are roll moulded.

On the inside of the west gable is a chimneypiece whose 15th-century jambs are thought to have come from the house of a John Hope that stood between Chalmer's and Barringer's Closes, which was being demolished at the time the church was rebuilt. The jambs are half-lozenge shaped in plan and feature fillets, scrollwork and foliage. The capitals are carved with four scenes of domestic life: a youth dressed as a wanderer sitting on a bank talking with a young shepherdess, a lamb between them; the same pair sitting closer together, hand in hand; a family group in which the parents sit endeavouring to pacify a crying child; and finally each parent holding a child in arms. The chimneypiece has a 19th-century hood. Comparable examples of such chimneypieces exist at the Palace of Linlithgow in the south range and at the Bishop's Palace at Dunblane.

Set into the north wall is a reset blocked doorway that formerly led to the sacristy of the original church. It encloses a large canopied piscina; the hood and basin are 15th or 16th century, while the jambs are 19th century.

Boundary Walls and Stone Fragments

The south boundary is a coped random rubble wall. To the west, a low coped wall and iron railings enclose a gravel area. Within the curtilage is a collection of salvaged stone fragments including capitals, fragments of a crossing pier, a doorhead and a niche canopy.

Historical Background

Trinity College Church was founded by Mary of Gueldres 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 written Boncle). The foundation supported eight prebendaries and two singing boys, and was also attached to a hospital for thirteen poor bedesmen, who were bound to pray for the soul of the foundress, her royal consort, and all their kin. After Mary of Gueldres died on 16 November 1463, building work slowed dramatically. 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. The numbered stones were stored on Calton Hill, described at the time as an act carried out against the strongest remonstrances. A calotype photograph by David Octavius Hill, taken shortly before demolition, shows the area where the hospital stood apparently in use as a stonemason's yard.

Rebuilding of the choir and apse — without aisles — on the present site began in 1872. Lessels incorporated approximately a third of the original stones; many others disappeared before they could be reused.

The apse was de-scheduled on 12 December 1997. It is no longer in use as an ecclesiastical building.

The decoration of the interior, the apse itself, and the salvaged stone fragments together represent a rare surviving glimpse of the high quality of 15th-century Scottish Middle Pointed or Decorated Gothic architecture that was once embodied in the whole of Trinity College Church. Further carved stone fragments from the original building are held at Lady Stair's House Museum and Craigcook Castle.

The church's Trinity Altarpiece, painted in the late 1470s by Hugo van der Goes and known as the Trinity Panels, was commissioned by Edward Bonkil. This diptych, painted on both sides, depicts the Holy Trinity; Bonkil with two angels; James III, King of Scots with his son James (?) and St Andrew; and Margaret of Denmark, Queen of Scots with St George (?). The work may originally have been a triptych, the central panel probably depicting the Virgin and Child and 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.