로슬린 성당(Rosslyn Chapel) 안내. 로슬린(Roslin)

로슬린 성당(Rosslyn Chapel) 안내.

로슬린(Roslin). 스코틀랜드(Scotland)

rosslynchapel.org.uk

 

Grand Designs

When Sir William St Clair came up with his idea to build a chapel almost 600 years ago, he was thinking big. His intention was to create a building to the glory of God which would ensure his place in Heaven.

 

Sir William's plan was to build a church more than twice the size of  the chapel you see today. once the site had been identified, one of the first tasks was to mark out the foundatins of the building. The foundations took in not only the Chapel that stands today but extended a further 30 meters (over 90 feet) to the gate to your left. Building the foundations alone took four years.

 

If Sir William had completed his grand design, it would have looked something like this illustration.

The Trustees of the National Library of Scotland

 

Sir William watched over the building of his church for almost 40 years until his death in 1484. By that time only the choir was standing. Sir William's son, Sir Oliver St Clair, finished roofing the building but did no more to fulfil his father's original design.

 

Containing the altars and space for the clergy to worship, the choir - the building which you see today - had all the essential elements to allow the church to function. And that was how it remained for almost 400 years until 1880 when the 4th Earl of Rosslyn added the baptistery at the end of the chapel closest to you.

 

              This part of the church                         This is the choir, the only part

               was never built.                                 of building which was completed.

 

French with a Scottish Accent

In 1446 when Sir William started work on the chapel, his designs were cutting edge. The new Gothic style was all the rage in the great cathedrals and churches of France.

 

Sir William, who would have employed French masons to work on the chapel, looked to incorporate these latest styles in his building. In a way, you could describe Rosslyn Chapel as a French design with a Scottish accent.

 

Rosslyn Chepel as it looked around 1693.

 

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I Spy with My Little Eye ...

Flying buttresses

These carry the weight of the internal arches and allowed the chapel to be built without central columns. This was a huge advance in engineering and would have impressed everyone who entered the building.

 

 

Arched windows

The Gothic style was all about pointed arches. It moved away from the earlier rounder Romanesque style which would have been considered old-fashioned by the 1450s

 

 

High level windows

Look all along the upper level of the Chapel and you can see a series of high-level windows. These were a new design feature which let light from the heavens pour into the chapel.

 

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Secrets of the Stones

Rosslyn Chapel has long been a building shrouded in mystery. Legend tells that a vault as deep as the chapel is high, is carved out beneath the building - the final resting place of the medieval St Clair knights who are laid out in their full suits of armour.

 

Many believe that the knights are not alone in being buried here - rumours abound that the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, even the head of Christ all lie hidden within the Chapel. But just like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code which catapulted the Chapel into the limelight, many see these as tales of fiction. However, there are plenty of secrets waiting to be discovered all over the Chapel. Let's see if you can find some of them.

 

Carved from the Glen

Take a look at the south side of the chapel facing you. The stone here ranges in colour from rose gold to rich umber.

This was quarried from Roslin Glen, behind you. Without the plentiful supply of stone from the glen, it is unlikely that Sir William would have built his chapel here.

 

 

Walk through Roslin Glen today and you can see the same rock that was used for the chapel.

 

Unfinished business

Look up at the tall wall which extends above the roof of the chapel in front of you; it is made up like a sandwich with an inner masonry wall, an outer external wall and rubble between. This is evidence of the chapel's founder, Sir William St Clair's, unfinished design for the building. He never intended this wall to be built. His church was to have extended another 30 metres to the west and this part of the building would have marked the start of a long nave.

 

This etching of Rosslyn Chapel was made around 1845 and shows what the chapel looked like before the baptistery was added.

 

Look at the four blocked up openings. The three lower openings would have formed the central and two side aisles of the larger church. You can still see the side aisle closest to you.

 

The baptistery now covers most of this wall

 

Holy Honey

When the stonemasons were conserving the roof of the chapel, they made a fascinating discovery. Look up at the pointed pinnacles which decorate the tops of the buttresses and you might be able to make out the carved flowers on the front face of some of them. Look more closely and you might notice that some of the flowers have a small hole at the centre. During their work, the conservators discovered that one of the pinnacles contained a beehive. These little holes were put there by the medieval masons to allow the bees to fly in and out.

 

The Medieval masons designed the pinnacles to take beehives.

 

Girls only

Can you see the entrance into the Chapel on the wall opposite you ?

This was the Ladies' entrance. It mirrors the entrance on the north side which was traditionally the Bachelors' door. For many years men and women had to enter and leave the chapel by seperate doors to worship in different parts of the building.

 

Don't Move - Extend !

By the 1860s when the chapel was brought into use again, the needs of the congregation had changed. To accommodate on organ and baptismal font needed for Victorian worship, the 4th Earl of Rosslyn decided to extend the chapel. Known as the baptistery, this is the part of the building closest to you. Can you notice the change of colour in the exterior stone which was probably quarried in Craigleith in Edinburgh, rather than the glen ?

 

The rest of the Chapel's secrets are up to you to find.

As you go on your way, have a really good look at the outside of the chapel. Can you find these carvings ?

 

Gargoyle

 

Camel

 

Farmer's wife rescuing a goose from the jaws of a fox

 

What else can you discover ?

 

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Windows on the Past

 Most of what we know about the chapel's construction comes from an account written by Father Hay, an early biographer of the St Clairs.

 

While this account lists many different trades, there is no mention of glaziers working on the chapel. This is perplexing as the stonework around the window openings shows an unexpected level of sophistication, with hand-cut glazing grooves and condensation channels.

 

It appears that the masons designed the openings to take glass although there is no evidence of any having been fitted. It is another of Rosslyn Chapel's mysteries: was glass simply too expensive or was stained glass illustrating Bible stories considered unnecessary in such as richly decorated building ?

 

 

Stories in Glass

The first record of glass being used in the chapel dates from 1736 when General James St Clair began work on the Chapel for the first time since it was abandoned 150 years before. In addition to adding a roof to the side aisles and re-laying the floor with flagstones, he also glazed the windows.

 

But the first stained glass did not arrive in the building until 1867 when Francis Robert, the 4th Earl of Rosslyn, istalled the stained glass windows in the Lady Chapel. Made by Clayton & Bell of London, the stained glass depicts the twelve apostles. Clayton & Bell's work was known for its brilliant luminosity and variety in the texture and colour of glass.

 

 

This window depicts St John on the left and

St Andrew on the right.

Can you see the Scottish Saint's saltire cross ?

 

Obviously pleased with the initial results, the Earl commissioned the company to make stained glass for the windows along the north and side aisles which depict saints and Biblical scenes.

 

 

 

In 1869 the Earl commissioned the stained glass for the large east window which sits above the altar. This scene depicts Christ's resurrection. on the left are three women arriving at the Christ's tomb; on the right three are two angels, one of whom holds a scroll with the inscription, 'He is not here but is risen'.

 

I Spy a ... kangaroo

The baptistery which was added in 1880, contains two memorial windows which were added by the 6th Earl of Rosslyn

 

The window closest to you was designed by William Wilson and shows an airman standing on the White Cliffs of Dover, flanked by the patron saints of Scotland - St Andrew, and England - St George. The window was added in 1950.

 

The window opposite this was made by Carrick Whalen and was added in 1970. Dedicated to the current Earl's grandmother who as a great animal lover, the window's theme is St Francis of Assisi.

The stained glass windows were conserved by the Scottish Glass Studios.

 

Can you find birds and butterflies, a squirrel, a rabbit, and, as a symbol of her Australian origins, a kangaroo ?

 

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Wrack, Ruin and Restoration

Incredibly for a building now appreciated as a unique part of our heritage, Rosslyn Chapel once lay derelict and neglected.

 

Tenacious tentaches of ivy wrapped around the columns, carpets of damp moss took hold and a dripping algae-covered ceiling gave the chapel an   green glow. When the wirter Dorothy Wordsworth visited in 1803 she described the carvings of plants and flowers 'tinged perfectly green' so much so that it was difficult to distinguish the living plants from the stone 'they being of an equally determined green'.

 

A Giant Umbrella

Although some restoration work was carried out to make the chapel useable again in the 1860s, it was not until Rosslyn Chapel Trust was formed in 1995 that a conservation strategy was put in place to stabilise the stonework. The first task was to cover the Chapel in a 50-tonne steel protective canopy. Acting like a giant umbrella, the canopy remained in place for 13 years as the stonework slowly and naturally dried out.

 

 

1996

Here you can see the ceiling before the canopy was erected. A covering of greee algae has taken hold in the damp, wet conditions.

 

2008

By 2008 the ceiling has dried out considerably and much of the algae has disappeared.

 

2012

The conservation work to the ceiling was finished in 2012, revealing the ceiling in its original glory.

 

 

Roofing the Chapel

At the same time as the inside of the ceiling was drying out, work got underway to remove a thick layer of asphalt which had been applied to the outside of the roof in the 1950s. The asphalt, originally intended to sotp the roof leaking, had cracked over time letting in water. Skilled stonemasons, from Nic Boyes Stone Conservation, painstakingly chipped away the asphalt by hand. A new lead roof has now been applied which will protect the barrel-vault for generations.

 

 

A Facelift for the Future

It was not only the roof which required attention. After nearly 600 years of man and nature taking their toll, the chapel was suffering from cracked and crumbling stone.

Using techniques more usually associated with conserving delicate museum sculpture, a highly skilled team of craftsmen and women have stablised the stonework, undoing the damage unwittingly caused in the past and helping to prevent further decay.

 

 

 

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Here are just some of the issues which the specialist Conservators addressed.

 

Filling the Cracks

A special reversible acrylic resin was injected into cracked stone to stop rainwater damage

 

Laser Light

A conservation laser gently removed damaging pollutants which the stone had absorbed over the centuries.

 

Invisible Mask

A synthetic binder was applied to crumbling stone to strenthen it.

 

Removing the Rust

Rusting iron cramps were removed and replaced with stainless steel replicas.

 

All in a Day's Work

 Unsightly bird and bat droppings that breakdown minerals

and weaken the stone were removed by hand

- 안내문에서 -

 

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