Thistle Chapel
The Thistle Chapel, located in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, Scotland, is the chapel of the Order of the Thistle.
At the foundation of the Order of the Thistle in 1687, King James VII ordered Holyrood Abbey be fitted out as a chapel for the Knights. At James's deposition the following year, a mob destroyed the Chapel's interior before the Knights ever met there. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, multiple proposals were made either to refurbish Holyrood Abbey for the Order of the Thistle or to create a chapel within St Giles' Cathedral. In 1906, after the sons of the 11th Earl of Leven donated £24,000 from their late father's estate, King Edward VII ordered a new Chapel to be constructed on the south side of St Giles's.
The Trustees appointed by the King to oversee the Chapel's construction appointed Robert Lorimer as architect. The Trustees insisted the choice of craftspeople should reflect the national character of the Chapel. Lorimer assembled a team of leading figures in the Scottish Arts and Crafts movement, including Phoebe Anna Traquair for enamelwork, Douglas Strachan for stained glass, Joseph Hayes for ornate stonework, and the brothers William and Alexander Clow for other woodwork. Louis Davis – who supplied stained glass – and the Bromsgrove Guild – who supplied bronze fittings – were the only major contributors based outside Scotland. Construction began in November 1909 and the Chapel was completed a little over a year later. After its official opening in July 1911, King George V knighted Lorimer for his work. Through the continuing addition of stall plates, crests, and banners for new Knights, the Chapel's tradition of craftsmanship persists to the present day. The Knights of the Thistle meet in the Chapel at least once a year.
Architectural critics have noted Lorimer's successful use of a limited site to create a soaring work of Gothic architecture, rich with architectural details. A number of critics have emphasised the Chapel's importance as a product of the Arts and Crafts movement, in which the collaborative craftsmanship of individual artisans defines the overall effect. Some critics have also emphasised the Chapel's political role as an expression of Scottish patriotism, British imperialism, and monarchism.
History
Holyrood Abbey
On 29 May 1687, James VII founded the Order of the Thistle and issued a warrant to designate Holyrood Abbey the chapel of the new order. This change of purpose necessitated the eventual removal of the Abbey's Church of Scotland congregation to the Canongate Kirk.In the seventeen months after the publication of the warrant, William Bruce oversaw the transformation of the Abbey: an altar and black and white marble floor were added and classical stalls were shipped from London. The Order of the Thistle never met in its new chapel: on 10 December 1688, in the wake of James' deposition, a mob from Edinburgh destroyed the furnishings.
Proposals for a new chapel
Although the order was revived in 1703 by Queen Anne, no chapel was designated. In 1728, the antiquarian William Douglas suggested the ruins of St Rule's Church in the grounds of St Andrews Cathedral be restored as a chapel for the order.Proposals to locate the chapel of the Order in St Giles' go back to 1872, when Secretary of the Order corresponded with the committee for the then-ongoing restoration of the church. In 1879 and 1882, Lindsay Mackersy, session clerk of the High Kirk, and the kirk session proposed the south transept of St Giles' as a chapel for the Order. None of these proposals proved practical.
In 1836, James Gillespie Graham and Augustus Pugin had drawn up plans to restore Holyrood Abbey as the chapel of the Order. Although Graham and Pugin's plans were not acted upon at the time, the same ambition was advanced in 1905, when Ronald Leslie-Melville, 11th Earl of Leven set up a fund of £40,000 to restore Holyrood Abbey for the Order of the Thistle. On investigation by Thomas Ross, the restoration of Holyrood Abbey was found to be impossible.
Construction
Upon the Earl's death in 1906, the fund reverted to his sons, who offered £22,000 and an endowment of £2,000 to construct a new chapel. Edward VII appointed William Montagu Douglas Scott, 6th Duke of Buccleuch; Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery; John David Melville, 12th Earl of Leven; and Schomberg Kerr McDonnell as trustees with Thomas Ross as architectural consultant. The King instructed to the Trustees to write to the kirk session of St. Giles' with the suggestion that a new chapel for the Order be housed in the Cathedral; on 12 March 1909, the Cathedral authorities gratefully accepted this offer. The Trustees appointed Robert Lorimer as architect. The King approved Lorimer's plans and the first building contract was signed on 24 August 1909 with the foundation stone being laid on 6 November that year. The sculptor appointed by Lorimer to execute the elaborate carving was Joseph Hayes.The Chapel was completed by the autumn of 1910 in time for the first St Andrew's Day gathering of the Knights. The Chapel was formally opened amidst much ceremony on 19 July 1911 by George V. At the opening, police hid in the boiler room beneath the Chapel to guard against the threat of vandalism by suffragettes. At the end of the ceremony, the King received the Chapel's craftspeople and Lorimer was shortly afterwards knighted for his work.
The Trustees insisted that "the Thistle Chapel is a national thing" and that, as such, preference should be shown to Scottish artisans. In line with the Arts and Crafts movement's emphasis on craftsmanship and collaboration, Lorimer had already assembled a largely Edinburgh-based team of artisans. Of the major contributors to the Chapel, only Louis Davis – who designed the heraldic stained glass – and the Bromsgrove Guild – who supplied decorative metalwork – were based outside Scotland. The speed with which the Chapel was completed is, in large part, due to the skill of this team of craftspeople.
Subsequent history
The former boiler room in the undercroft of the Chapel was redeveloped in 1982 by Bernard Feilden and Simpson & Brown. Between 1987 and 2019, a cafe occupied the space immediately below the Chapel.Over four months in 2006, a major cleaning and preservation operation was undertaken by the firm of Charles Taylor: this was the first thorough maintenance project in the Chapel's history.
The Thistle Chapel was temporarily closed to visitors from February 2015 after a number of valuable items were stolen. The Chapel re-opened to visitors the following year.
Architecture
The Thistle Chapel is simple in form: the Chapel itself consists of three bays and an apsidal east end with neither aisles nor transepts. Beneath the Chapel is an undercroft and adjoining the Chapel is the ante-chapel with arches opening into the Preston Aisle and south choir aisle of the Cathedral and an external east door and steps providing access to Parliament Square.The chapel sits in a constrained site: on the edge of St Giles' Cathedral at its north and west and constricted by Parliament Square to its south and east; the kirk session of St Giles' Cathedral also required the Chapel should not interfere with services in the Cathedral or block light from the church. To create an impression of grandeur, Lorimer designed the Chapel to be unusually tall: the interior of the Chapel, while only 5.5 meters wide and 11.5 meters long, is 13 meters tall.
At the time of the commission, Robert Lorimer, a former pupil of Robert Rowand Anderson and George Frederick Bodley, was roughly half-way through his architectural career; though his only major ecclesiastical commission had been St Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Morningside. John Fraser Matthew, Lorimer's future partner, assisted Lorimer in the design of the Chapel. Lorimer's design takes inspiration from late 15th century Gothic architecture and, in its form and in its use of curvilinear tracery, displays the influence of George Frederick Bodley.
The Chapel is constructed of sandstone from Cullalo in Fife. The same stone was employed by William Burn as ashlar to face the exterior of St Giles' during the restoration of 1829–33 and by Robert Reid for the construction of the Law Courts on the opposite side of Parliament Square. The exterior of the Thistle Chapel therefore appears consistent with St Giles' while complementing other buildings on Parliament Square. Christopher Hussey argued Lorimer was successful in creating a chapel that "harmonises perfectly with the Cathedral structure as a whole, but fearlessly proclaims its individuality."
Exterior
On its exterior, the Chapel's base is emphasised by multiple horizontal moulded courses, from which rise gableted buttresses; the buttresses terminate at the cornice of the castellated parapet. The parapet conceals the flat, asphalt-covered concrete roof. According to Christopher Hussey, the "pronounced batter of the buttresses" creates "an illusion of height and massiveness without".The buttresses divide the exterior into bays: between each bay, the plinth, pierced by dormer-like ventilation holes, slopes steeply to a sheer wall surface below a traceried lancet window. This sloping plinth was likely inspired by chapels at the east end of Chartres Cathedral. On the cornice above each window, a demi-angel bears a shield while below each window is the escutcheon and coronet of each Knight at the time of Chapel's construction corresponding to the arms depicted in the window. The curvilinear tracery of these windows evokes the surviving medieval tracery of St Giles'. At the east end, the parapet rises to accommodate a canopied niche, in which stands a statue of Saint Andrew.
At the west end, an octagonal turret, capped with a spirelet, stands in the south corner: this contains a spiral staircase, which leads to the roof. The west window is in the form of an oriel and the west gable is crow-stepped.
Between the south wall of Saint Giles and the north side of the Chapel, a wide flight of steps rises to the east door, which leads to the ante-chapel. The round-arched doorway dates to the 15th century and originally stood at the south entrance to St Giles'. At the restoration of 1829–1833, William Burn reincorporated the doorway as part of an internal partition wall. When the Cathedral's partition walls were demolished during the restoration of 1871–1883, William Hay reconstructed the door at the royal entrance at the east end of the church. The royal entrance was constructed during the Burn restoration and consisted of a chamber accessed by a flight of steps. During the construction of the Thistle Chapel, the royal entrance was demolished and replaced by the ante-chapel while the doorway was retained and reincorporated as the entrance to the ante-chapel. Above the door rests a heavy heraldic frieze under an uninterrupted parapet.