An afternoon poke about Restalrig

23rd April 2025

Being well over halfway through my honours dissertation, I decided to chance an afternoon off. This morning, having flicked through Fawcett’s fabulous Scottish Medieval Churches I was quite taken aback to see listed on the map on the rear cover Restalrig.

The area was one I had not explored. Shamefully, I had all but written it off, having seen it from a distance from the bus window and thought not much of it. Admittedly, the London Road does not provide a particularly pleasing aspect over what is a quaint and ancient village, home to an extremely old collegiate church with enough history and legend to please all but the most churlish enthusiasts of ecclesiastical architecture.

I should preface my visit by saying that all of my knowledge here comes from a single source, the ever-erudite Malcolm Cant, whose Villages of Edinburgh series has proved an indespensible companion to my wanders about the city. Restalrig is accounted in volume one, and I shall try to add more of my experience here than simply recounting Cant, something which I do hope he would be agreeable to, as I am sure it was his desire to improve the knowledge of the residents of Edinburgh about their city.

I alighted the no. 34 bus at Marrionville Drive, and made the short walk back up to St. Ninian and Triduana RC church, having mistaken its high walls for those of the much older church for which I was looking. Immediately, it was clear that though it had older parts, this was not the church in question. I turned back the way I had come, sensing a more “town centre” feeling to the other end of the street.

It was here that I happened across Restalrig Road South, and saw what looked like the ancient walls of an old monastary. Intrigued, I proceeded.

Blanchland was the first thing that came to mind, a village vaguely within Northumberland, to the south of Hexham. There, the old monastic walls form parts of the modern-day village, and that was much the case in Restalrig. The street was very quiet - a one-way affair - and had a decidedly different feeling to it than the rest of the area. I knew that at the end of this street was the church, and it was to this that I first ventured.

Restalrig church (dedicated to St Margaret) holds as much ecclesiastical importance as it does architectural. Ecclesiastically, the area was once home to a spring with healing powers, found around the 6th century by St. Triduana. She supposedly came to Angus to live the life of a recluse but was persued romantically by Nectan, King of the Picts. He became obsessed by her eyes, and finding this to be obtrusive to her religious endeavours, plucked them out on a thorn and handed them to the King’s guards. Triduana ended up at Restalrig, where she found the waters had healing powers over the eyes. Restalrig well, now dedicated to the saint, became a place of pilgramage for those afflicted by blindness and similar conditions of vision. (N.B., this is an extremely poor retelling of the story accounted in Cant (1982)).

Over the well was built a grand hexagonal structure sometime around 1440-1470 (Baldwin, 1985), only the undercroft of which survived. This is thanks to a disagreement on the topic of sexual morality between Logan of Restalrig and the new Protestant church. Restalrig church was declared by the General Assembley a “Monument of Idolatrie” and they ordered it be “utterlie castin downe and destroyed”. And indeed it was, with very little of the 14th century building remaining, specifically only some parts of the north, south and west gables of the choir, with most of the stone being used to build parts of the old town.

The hexagonal building was restored by Thomas Ross in 1906, though only to a single storey despite there being evidence for two originally. Cant’s description of the buildings is, as ever, extensive and detailed, and I would thoroughly recommend his account as further reading.

I progressed out of the churchyard and continued reading as I walked, stopping to sit on a bench in the street opposite the buildings about which I was reading. In front of me was the oldest building in Restalrig, and indeed between its extremely weathered-looking stone and stout doorway, this was a fact I could believe. Cant remarks that this building was once used as the church hall, but before that had likely been domestic. The crowsteps on the gables were later additions, and indeed the building has been heavily altered from its original form, with the windows being replaced by doorways on the lower floor and the removal of an extrnal staircase, the landing of which was said to have been made of one of the headstones from the churchyard opposite.

Nearby, Craigentinny House, now a community centre, stands in all its Baronial splendour. Cant, and indeed the above linked blog both go into detail about the eccentric residents and architectural changes which have given the house its coloured history.

Having an afternoon poke about a place which one had previously written off and finding a medieval enclave is perhaps one of my favourite hobbies. It’s something I seem to manage to do with alarming regularity, which I suppose could speak to the fact that I should be more thorough before writing anywhere off! As always, my collection of books on historical, especially ecclesiastical, architecture proved invaluable in understanding the meaning and history of certain buildings - reading them rather than simply seeing them if you will. I look forward to the next village I happen to discover…

References

Baldwin, J. 1985. “Edinburgh, Lothians and Borders”. HM Stationary Office, London [Publisher].

Cant, M. 1982. pp.177-199. “Villages of Edinburgh”. John Donald Publishers Ltd., 138 St. Stephen Street, Edinburgh [Publisher].

References

Further Reading