St Cuthbert's Kirk & Kirkyard Under the Castle
Why is it significant?
Walk down into the hollow and look around: a crowded kirkyard of tilted gravestones, carved urns and mossy obelisks, with the Castle rock rearing above, and in the middle a church with a tall, slender spire. You have stepped below street level into one of the oldest places of worship in Edinburgh.
Key Facts
| Place | St Cuthbert's Kirk & Kirkyard Under the Castle |
|---|---|
| Address | 5 Lothian Road, Edinburgh EH1 2EP, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.94910, -3.20580 |
| Part of Walk | Painted, Carved and Planted: Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens and the Mound |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk down into the hollow and look around: a crowded kirkyard of tilted gravestones, carved urns and mossy obelisks, with the Castle rock rearing above, and in the middle a church with a tall, slender spire. You have stepped below street level into one of the oldest places of worship in Edinburgh. Tradition says Christians have prayed here for well over a thousand years.
The church is named after Saint Cuthbert, the seventh-century monk of Lindisfarne, and a church on this spot is recorded in the Middle Ages, standing beside the waters of the Nor' Loch. The present building is mostly from the 1890s, designed by Hippolyte Blanc, but its spire is older, from 1789. Inside, look for a stained-glass window from the New York studio of Louis Comfort Tiffany, a rare thing to find in Scotland.
Now find the round watchtower at the corner of the kirkyard. It was built in 1827 so that watchmen could guard fresh graves at night. In those years Edinburgh's medical schools needed bodies for dissection, and body-snatchers dug up the newly buried to sell them to anatomists. It was grim, organised work, and towers like this one were the city's answer. Imagine a watchman up there on a winter night, lantern shuttered, a stout stick beside him, listening for the scrape of a spade.
Among the graves lies George Meikle Kemp, the self-taught joiner who designed the Scott Monument and drowned before it was finished. Thomas De Quincey, author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, who once hid from his creditors in the sanctuary of Holyrood, is buried here too. Writers, architects and merchants of the Georgian city share these paths.
Leave by the gate on the far side of the kirkyard, which opens into West Princes Street Gardens beneath the Castle. Look for a flash of turquoise and gold among the trees. It is the most scandalous fountain in Edinburgh, and the end of this walk.