IT must be Norman. This was the main design stipulation of the 1872 competition for a new church on sloping ground in Low Broughton.

The Catholic Apostolic Church already had a modest presence on Broughton Street, but its leaders wanted something larger and more impressive. They sought a home which would let the congregation grow and give full expression to the elaborate rituals of their worship.

Its spaces should evoke piety and grandeur, awe and exultation but in an architectural style free of perceived ‘papish’ excess.

Robert Rowand Anderson’s winning response was an exercise in massive restraint, which still cheers and solemnises at the corner of East London Street and Mansfield Place.

Measuring 200 ft x 45 ft, its roof summiting at 77 ft, the walls 4 ft 6 in thick, this was an imposing statement of faith at the New Town’s edge. It could accommodate 700, although it’s doubtful whether regular attendance exceeded 150.

The Church was in part a charismatic response to certainties overturned by the French Revolution.

It was formally constituted in London in 1835 by founders who foresaw an imminent Apocalypse and Second Coming.

Their buildings and liturgy were designed to honour the mysterious but real presence of Christ during Eucharists, and to welcome His arrival when the Millennium dawned.

By tithes and donations, affluent worshippers raised the £17,000 needed for the first phase of building. Anderson began in 1873 with a church officer’s dwelling and vast undercroft on which sat the nave, double chancel and apse.

The narthex (entry porch) and circular baptistry were added for a further £4,000 in 1885. Not including furnishings, it cost around £1.3m in today’s terms.

Anderson’s uninterrupted nave afforded clear views of sacraments at the altar. These set pieces were discharged by a hierarchy of clergy comprising an Angel (bishop), elders, prophets, evangelicals and pastors, each in gorgeous vestments. They numbered around 25 in total, supported by a small army of colourfully robed lay deacons.

It was an order repeated above the soaring chancel arch. Here, Phoebe Traquair’s mural (painted in 1893–95) depicts a Heavenly Church with choirs of angels, cherubim and a multitude of the redeemed giving praise. Their textured golden aureoles, crowns and trumpets made the whole interior ‘scintillate and glow’.

It was, said the poet W.B. Yeats, Traquair’s ‘drama of the soul’.

Each day at 6 am, the first of four services began amid specially-composed music, incense and the flickering light of candles and olive-oil lamps. The ceremony, drawn from select Anglican, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, was widely acknowledged as beautiful and moving. Worshippers thrilled to the invisible but literal proximity of Christ. Some gave voice to revelations and prophecies in strange tongues.

It was all both sincere and theatrical, a feast for the mind and senses, a vivid contrast to the buttoned-up Edinburgh of sombre Presbyterianism, coal smoke and rain, of mirthless nine-hour sermons and ‘Cabbage Feasts’ in the Glasite Meeting House.

However, since only the institution’s original 12 apostles could ordain new clergy, as they died so the Church itself withered until, in 1958, it disbanded here and in 1971 ceased altogether.

Baptists occupied the narthex for some 20 years, but the rest of Anderson’s structure warehoused bricks until, by hook and by crook, the Mansfield Traquair Trust acquired it in 1998 and set about extensive repair and restoration.

The glorious ground floor can now be hired for events and weddings. But, crucially, the Trust provided for the building’s future by converting the labyrinthine undercroft into open-plan office space – a mezzanine substructure which can be removed if necessary, later.

The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations leased this area until last year, but so far no new occupant has been found.

Once again, then, Anderson’s tour-de-force stands underused, patiently anticipating an important arrival.

On clear evenings, its western face resembles some armoured Cyclops glaring at the setting sun. On sodden winter days, its northern elevation darkens in precipitous gloom. I have stood at its southern flank by moonlight, when the church becomes a couchant lion: silent, impassive, waiting for that moment when the spirit stirs and bids it rise.

Alan McIntosh is an author, academic editor and contributing editor of the local newsletter, The Broughton Spurtle.

There are open days at the Mansfield Traquair Centre this summer on June 14, July 12 and August 11–27. Check here for times.

Image details: copyright Alan McIntosh, text copyright: Alan McIntosh

A BUNCH of us from school in Glasgow used to take the train through to Edinburgh to watch rugby internationals at Murrayfield.

The routine was always the same. We’d get off the train at Haymarket and walk to the stadium. Game over, we’d proceed to Princes Street and up the Mound, to Deacon Brodie’s Tavern.

The pies were good and so was the beer. Then down the hill to Waverley for the train home.

I wouldn’t have been surprised to have bumped into Robert Louis Stevenson or Deacon Brodie himself on those evenings, such was the intimate atmosphere of mystery and menace in the wynds and closes of the Old Town.

So I was thinking Murrayfield, home of Scottish rugby, as my favourite building - a structure really, back then open to the elements and no seats, except for the spectators in the West Stand.

Wrap-around cover was fitted in the 1990s when an impressively-engineered web of steel created an all-seat venue, albeit with a reduced capacity of 67,000 spectators; previously, more than 100,000 fans could get in.

Deacon Brodie’s is a favourite as well, but its story is well-known.

There are many buildings in Edinburgh associated with booze, such as Dynamic Earth, high-tech in the shell of an old brewery. My current choice is the Port of Leith Distillery, designed by Glasgow architects, ThreeSixty, and opened three years ago.

My nephew, partial to ‘a wee dram’, he confessed, was in town for a few days, so I suggested we do a tour.

Easy to book online, ‘tasting experience’ included.

We took the tram from Princes Street to Leith and got off at Ocean Terminal.

Expecting something picturesque, my nephew took one look and gasped, “Is this it?”

We walked on to the distillery. It cannot be described as picturesque but it’s a more refined piece of architecture than Ocean Terminal, the shopping mall built about 2000 on the site of the Henry Robb shipyard.

The distillery is a steel-framed, nine-storey structure that expresses perfectly the modernist dictum, ‘form follows function’.

Basically, it’s a box, but what a box! It was constructed on an almost impossible site, constrained by water and Ocean Terminal. The only way to go was up. It wasn’t conceived to be so, but it evolved to be Scotland’s first vertical distillery and is the tallest distillery in the world.

The tour takes you through the partly gravity-fed production process - grain milling and mashing at the top, descending through fermentation to the hand-crafted copper stills at the bottom.

Every aspect is visible and spotlessly clean. Environmentally-focussed too.

As the guide explained to our group, the barley is locally-sourced and malted, cutting food miles and the carbon footprint. The building includes events spaces, offices, a shop and, of course, a bar.

Whisky is not new in Leith, where bonded warehouses have traditionally stored the ‘water of life’ for maturation, bulk sale and export.

Leith was Scotland’s premier port until Glasgow eclipsed it in the 19th century, but it remains the nation’s largest enclosed deep-water harbour, used by ships that service North Sea oil and gas fields and offshore wind farms.

There is a cruise ship terminal and the Royal Yacht Britannia, now a tourist attraction. Forth Ports secured the right to display the historic ship after it was decommissioned, in 1997.

In the distillery bar on the eighth floor, you can have a wee dram and a bite to eat.

Outside, the marine traffic, the port’s cranes and Britannia look like toys. “Great view,” we agreed and raised our glasses.

“Cheers!”

Robin Ward is an Edinburgh-based architecture critic, writer, graphic designer and a graduate of Glasgow School of Art. The Port of Leith Distillery is featured in his book, The Pocket Guide to Edinburgh’s Best Buildings, published by Birlinn in 2025.

Text copyright: Robin Ward; image copyright: Mike Wilson

AN unconsidered trifle - such as Joseph Marr Johnston’s Duke Street Church Halls, in Leith - always catches my attention; its modest appeal often masking a larger truth.

Leith expanded from a population of 10,000 in 1800 to 70,000 by 1930 although growth slowed after the port’s unpopular amalgamation with Edinburgh in 1920.

Imports of tea, grain and timber, exports of whisky - no port exported more whisky than Leith - and shipbuilding created this growth and the career of local architect, Johnston.

He had a sound training with ‘Scotland’s premier architect’, Robert Rowand Anderson, among others, working on the McEwan Hall and the National Portrait Gallery, sufficient to set up in independent practice in Leith in 1900.

In 1904, he won the architectural competition for the Seafield Poorhouse in a Scottish Art Nouveau or ‘Glasgow School’ idiom of white render, red sandstone dressings, prominent oversailing eaves and distinctive ventilator housings - not dissimilar to Tynecastle School of 1911 - worth £11.5m today. It was converted to the Eastern General Hospital in 1931 and demolished in 2008.

The Duke Street Church Halls followed in 1907, with Johnston further developing his ‘Glasgow School’ aesthetic.

This knowledgeable, clever and expressive red sandstone elevation merits close study.

It consists of two central bays flanked by pavilions. In the pavilions, the mullions of the recessed Diocletian windows on ground and first floors - the upper with a flatter arch - are projected into continuous pilasters providing support for the deeply-projected canopies and canted parapets, linked by simple ironwork, above.

Just below the canopies are chequerboard panels of variegated coloured sandstone.

The central bays are differentiated from the pavilions by deep grooves rising from the ends of the steel lintels over the entrance doors and which in turn align with the transoms in the adjacent windows.

The arched windows beneath the deeply-projected flat-arched hood lintel have the inverted gothic tracery favoured by Johnston’s Glasgow contemporaries and also found at St John’s Portobello, 1903.

Although obscured by 120 years of soot, there is evidence of further multi-coloured ashlar masonry banding linking the sills and lintels in the pavilions across the central bays.

So what’s the larger truth I started with?

Johnston himself had some inkling of it.

Like many a locally-based architect, immersion in that work separated him from his peers and from wider recognition.

He observed, in 1911, that “during the last ten years or so I have been so much tied up in this town [Leith] as to have got out of touch with the members of the Institute with whom I am acquainted and have some reluctance in asking them to vouch for me now as I have no reason to believe they are acquainted with work I have done.”

Little known then, almost unknown today, Johnston has suffered from the narrow interpretation of Scottish Art Nouveau as being the sole property of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Mackintosh’s sun shines so bright it has left most of his contemporaries in crepuscular shade. He’s the default subject for the lazy writer with an eye to easy sales, who has nothing new to say, reliant on third-hand sources for decades.

I love Johnston’s Duke Street Church Halls for its being a little gem of ‘Glasgow School’ in Edinburgh, for its survival and for its signifying of a richer history of Scottish architecture between 1895 and 1915 yet to be written.

I passed this building every school day for 13 years, attended Cub Scout meetings there and, in my schoolboy ignorance, gave it no mind.

Roger Emmerson is the author of three architecture books: Matt Steele, Architect: a biography; Land of Stone: a journey through modern architecture in Scotland; and Scotland in 100 Buildings.

Image details: copyright Roger Emmerson; text copyright Roger Emmerson

SANDY Bell’s is a pub of stories. Proudly declaring itself to be the ‘home of world-renowned folk music’, plenty of other people are better placed than I am to tell you of the history of the pub, particularly its associations with the folk music revival.

The premises are a former corner shop on the ground floor of an imposing Edinburgh Old Town tenement.

Despite some tough times, it remains a convivial mix of locals, students and tourists.

Online reviews are usually excellent with a few folk highlighting the downsides of cramming lots of people into a small space, with limited facilities and, as a ‘wet’ pub, no bar meals.

This couthy place doesn’t suit everyone, but I loved it from the first time I came to Edinburgh.

Now, it has become place for good tunes and memorable encounters.

It’s not for the architectural merit that this is my favourite building in Edinburgh.

I play music there and have done so regularly for over 25 years. I’ve had a birds-eye view of the ebb and flow. As people come and go, I’ve had conversations and played music with all sorts of people that I wouldn’t otherwise have met.

There are, of course, people who take lots of photographs, fail to buy a drink and leave.

We often get fellow musicians from out of town looking for a tune and, just recently, we were sketched at play by a couple of young women from the Netherlands off the next day on the North Coast 500.

Tourists come in all guises. Canadians, Americans (some disguised as Canadians) and Australians looking for their ancestors and good whisky. A couple from the USA who were befriended by our late departed concertina player remain good friends and regular visitors, wistfully looking to decamp to Edinburgh, full-time.

Recent times have been memorable, sometimes wild, at others rather poignant.

The Italians on a works outing from an Irish bar in Turin will not forget their trip to Edinburgh. The same night there were some international students from London.

Steel drums are not a traditional instrument in Scottish or Irish music, but one of them did a great job of joining in. Unconventional and joyous.

We had great tunes with some musicians over in Edinburgh from Ireland for a funeral.

Their singer, formerly of a ‘raucous, fun and captivating’ Irish band was coaxed to sing a beautiful ballad by our piano player. Another time, they graciously gave up their seat to a New York jazz pianist who had a go and decided better of it.

We’ve had other stars here too. Some lie low or stay at the bar. Local friends who know the ropes might make sure to get them the right seat.

For many people, live music is a rare treat. But many talented people come to Scotland to hear music and, in the process, share their own. Luckily for us, a fieldtrip to study unaccompanied Gaelic psalm singing in the Hebrides might well start in Sandy Bells.

Fascination with the banjo led a young Moroccan woman to share clips of Berber music played on the same instrument.

Pubs like this are a great shared space. Room for spontaneity, connection and learning about each other and what we share. They show the best of what a city can be. And when I’m a tourist myself, I remember that.

Dr Cathy Sharp had an early career as a housing and planning policy researcher and was once the research manager at Scottish Homes. She founded Research for Real in Edinburgh in 2002 and now draws on her experience to write Grow as We Go. She is recognised in the UK and internationally for work that challenges thinking and practice about leadership, participation, research, learning, and evaluation. She is an Honorary Professor in the School of Health at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson; text copyright Cathy Sharp

I’VE had a connection with the King’s Theatre, which is currently being renovated, for many years; and not just because of the blast that I’ve had - with Allan Stewart, Andy Gray and, now, Jordan Young - with the annual pantomime.

It’s a connection that goes back to my high school days, in the early 1980s.

When I was at school, there was no question that…

Read more

I GREW up in Edinburgh and would often travel by bus to The Royal Scottish Museum in Chambers Street where I would spend the afternoon wandering about looking at the displays that encompassed science and technology, natural history, and world cultures.

There were stuffed animals from all over the world, scientific equipment, steam locomotives, engines (s…

Read more

FLYING into Edinburgh, I can never spot the house I grew up in, the one I own now, or the ones in between.

But there’s no missing the building that spans my six decades - Easter Road Stadium, the life landmark, in colours green and white.

When you see Hibernian FC’s ground, you know you’re home.

Easter Road is a beautiful place to be, down the slope from A…

Read more

TWENTY‑five years late, I must publicly declare that the Scottish Parliament is my favourite building in Edinburgh, something that would surprise of my younger, less wise self.

Thank you, Build Edinburgh, for the chance to make a sincere public apology to the man who picked the site and to the widely optimistic initial budget.

The Scottish Parliament is …

Read more

TUCKED quietly behind the grand sweep of St Andrew Square and just around the corner from the bustle of Princes Street stands one of my favourite buildings in Edinburgh, New Register House.

It is not the most photographed building in the city, and many people pass by without realising what lies inside.

Yet, for me, it is one of the most powerful places …

Read more

PEN-pushing - or whatever is its modern equivalent - is Edinburgh’s ubiquitous purpose.

No ‘echt’ Edinburgher wants to get dirt under their fingernails or come into contact with elbow grease, if they can at all avoid it.

Rather, here be divines and lawyers, academics and bankers, politicians and their bag carriers, journalists and civil servants, archiv…

Read more

IN times past (well, before COVID) a tartan-clad steward would fling the door wide open for you, in a dramatic welcome, as you arrived at the Portrait Gallery on Queen Street.

Nowadays, the ‘greeters’ wear blue zip-ups and not much flinging goes on - which is a pity - but what hasn’t changed is the wealth of treasure and the life-enhancing experience to…

Read more

I USED to live in Royal Mile Mansions, on North Bridge, and when it comes to the Old Town versus the New Town, I am definitely an Old Town person. I wouldn’t really want to live in the New Town, to be honest.

I have two favourite places in Edinburgh. One is the Cameo cinema and the other is Old Saint Paul’s, the Scottish Episcopal church just underneath…

Read more

INDIA Buildings, on Victoria Street, and I go back a long way. Mum worked in India Buildings, and I vividly remember going to visit her there as a child.

She worked in an office just off a magnificent rotunda and my daughter, Gemma, was also the first registered birth when it became a registry office. That’s how I came to know the building, and my love f…

Read more

I CAN’T remember why I first visited Prestonfield House, here in Edinburgh, but I vividly recollect the big initial impression it made.

Driving past the bungalows in Priestfield Road and then turning through the grand entrance gates was to be transported to another time and another place.

It’s a throwback to the days when Edinburgh was just the Old Town a…

Read more