St Benets Archiepiscopal Chapel, 42 Greenhill Gardens, Edinburgh, Morningside, Edinburgh

Entry Name: St Benets Archiepiscopal Chapel, 42 Greenhill Gardens, Edinburgh

Listing Name: 42 Greenhill Gardens Roman Catholic Archiepiscopal Chapel

Listing Date: 14 December 1970

Category: A

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 371526

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB30521

Building Class: Cultural

ID on this website: 200371526

Location: Edinburgh

County: Edinburgh

Town: Edinburgh

Electoral Ward: Morningside

Traditional County: Midlothian

Tagged with: Chapel

Description

Robert Weir Schultz, 1905-7 (see separate listing of adjoining archishops residence, St Bennet's). Byzantine style, Greek cross-plan private chapel with narthex, aisles, apse and dome. Squared and snecked sandstone with contrasting polished ashlar dressings. Round-headed windows to sides and rear with rope hoodmouldings.

N ENTRANCE elevation: 3-bay narthex; gabled body of church behind with dome at crossing. Architraved round-arched doorway with Celtic carved keystone and impost blocks in central bay; deep-set 2-leaf boarded door with decorative iron hinges and fittings; flanking bays with similarly detailed paired windows set in round-arched panels with carved Celtic crosses in tympani. Ocagonal section drum comprising round-headed panels each with narrow round-arched windows; drum above.

S ELEVATION: canted apse to centre; single window to each face.

E ELEVATION: adjoined to house by 1930s offices.

W ELEVATION: gabled tripartite window to centre; single window to outer right; 2 windows to outer left. Fixed leaded narrow windows to narthex and dome; stained glass windows to chapel. Green copper roofs; pitched roof to chapel; lean-to roof to narthex; copper dome; original lead rainwater goods, including hoppers, downpipes and brackets.

INTERIOR: outstanding classical Italianate style (see notes); geometrical parquet flooring; dado panelling; carved panels; panelled door; domed and vaulted spaces formed by half timber,half plaster columns,fluted columns and pilasters; gilded capitals; decorative plasterwork to barrel vaults; podium, lectern and missal stand by Messrs Scott and Hunter; prie-dieu designed by Schultz and executed by Ernest Gimson; stained glass, 3 lights to apse and 3 lights to W, by Gabriel Loire of Chartres 1969. GATEPIERS AND BOUNDARY WALLS: 2 obelisk gatepiers and quadrant walls to Greenhill gardens; high coped rubble boundary and mutual walls; sundial pedestal (formerly in the grounds of Grange House).

Statement of Interest

A-Group with 42 Greenhill gardens (house). The third Marquess of Bute (died 1900) bequeathed a sum of money for the construction of a domestic chapel for the Archishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh. Much of the interior had been designed by William Frame in 1889 for the cahpel at the House of Falkland, Fife. After Frame had been dismissed for drunkenness his scheme was abandoned and the completed work packed away. Robert Weir Schultz replaced Frame at the House of Falkland and was also Lord Bute's choice of architect for the archbishops chapel. In 1899 Schultz had designed a subterranean brick chapel (Byzantine in style and plan) for Lord Bute in the grounds of St John's Lodge, Regent's Park, London. The archishop's chapel appears to be an above ground reworking of the St Johns Lodge chapel, reusing the internal fittings designed by Frame. Account books show that the old parquet flooring was relayed by Scott, Morton & Co, and that a dozen small chairs and prie-dieux were ordered to Schultz's design from the workshops of Ernest Gimson (a single prie-dieu remains). S Sophia (1882-87), Galston and St MIldred's (1928), Linlithgow, by R R Anderson and Dick Peddie and Todd respectively share the unusual choice of Byzantine style with the archiepiscopal chapel.

External Links

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