Rosslyn Chapel

William Sinclair founded the chapel as a collegiate church on a hill above Roslin Glen, with four to six ordained canons and two boy choristers. He endowed it to sustain the Liturgy of the Hours day and night and masses for the dead. Building began on 20 September 1456, although a 1446 papal founding charter has often caused the construction date to be reported incorrectly as 1446.

The original project was cruciform but stopped after the choir, retro-chapel or Lady Chapel, and an earlier Lower Chapel were built. Nineteenth-century records traced foundations of the unbuilt nave and transepts for 90 feet. This incompletion is central to the building’s form: its famous interior is not an entire medieval church but the realised eastern part of a far larger intended plan.

The Scottish Reformation ended Catholic worship at Rosslyn in 1560, and its altars were destroyed in 1592. By Queen Victoria’s 1842 visit, the chapel was ruinous and overgrown. At her urging, David Bryce restored it for James Alexander, third Earl of Rosslyn; it was rededicated on 22 April 1862 and Sunday services resumed under the Scottish Episcopal Church.

On 11 July 1914 a bomb exploded inside Rosslyn Chapel during the nationwide suffragette bombing and arson campaign of 1912–14. Churches were targeted because campaigners believed the Church of England reinforced opposition to women’s suffrage; 32 churches were attacked between 1913 and 1914. The attack places the chapel within a wider history of militant suffrage protest.

The Rosslyn Chapel Trust began overseeing conservation and visitor access in 1995. From 1997 to 2013, a long programme repaired roof, stone, carvings, stained glass and organ; a steel canopy sheltered the roof for fourteen years while the building dried. Major stonework was finished by 2011 and a visitor centre opened in July 2011, with restoration expected to cost about £13 million.