page_title: St Giles' Cathedral
section_title: Exterior
hierarchical_section_title: St Giles' Cathedral / Architecture / Exterior
caption_attribution_description: English: "The Parliament Close and Public Characters Fifty Years Since". It depicts a scene from before 1796, the year when the Goldsmiths' Hall, seen on the left of the picture, was burnt down. Some of the characters shown in the painting, based on caricatures by John Kay, are identified on its description page at Commons.
context_page_description: St Giles' Cathedral, or the High Kirk of Edinburgh, is a parish church of the Church of Scotland located in the Old Town of Edinburgh. The current building was begun in the 14th century and extended until the early 16th century; significant alterations were undertaken in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the addition of the Thistle Chapel. St Giles' is closely associated with many events and figures in Scottish history, including John Knox, who served as the church's minister after the Scottish Reformation.
  Likely founded in the 12th century and dedicated to Saint Giles, the church was elevated to collegiate status by Pope Paul II in 1467. In 1559, the church became Protestant with John Knox, the foremost figure of the Scottish Reformation, as its minister. After the Reformation, St Giles' was internally partitioned to serve multiple congregations as well as secular purposes, such as a prison and as a meeting place for the Parliament of Scotland. In 1633, Charles I made St Giles' the cathedral of the newly created Diocese of Edinburgh.
context_section_description: The exterior of the church, with the exception of the tower, dates almost entirely from William Burn's restoration of 1829-33 and afterwards. Prior to this restoration, St Giles' possessed what Richard Fawcett called a "uniquely complex external appearance" as the result of the church's numerous extensions; externally, a number of chapels were emphasised by gables.
  Following the early 19th century demolition of the Luckenbooths, Tolbooth, and shops built against St Giles', the walls of the church were exposed to be leaning outward by as much as one and a half feet in places. Burn encased the exterior of the building in polished ashlar of gray sandstone from Cullalo in Fife. This layer is tied to the existing walls by iron cramps and varies in width from eight inches (20 centimetres) at the base of the walls to five inches (12.5 centimetres) at the top. Burn co-operated with Robert Reid, the architect of new buildings in Parliament Square, to ensure the exteriors of their buildings would complement each other. Burn significantly altered the profile of the church: he expanded the transepts, created a clerestory in the nave, added new doorways in the west front and north and south transepts, and replicated the cusped cresting from the east end of the church throughout the parapet. Alongside the Thistle Chapel, extensions since the Burn restoration include William Hay's additions of 1883: rooms south of the Moray Aisle, east of the south transept, and west of the north transept; in 1891, MacGibbon and Ross added a ladies’ vestry – now the shop – at the east of the north transept.
  Burn created a symmetrical western façade by replacing the west window of the Albany Aisle at the northwest corner of the church with a double niche and by moving the west window of the inner south nave aisle to repeat this arrangement in the southern half. The west doorway dates from the Victorian restoration and is by William Hay: the doorway is flanked by niches containing small statues of Scottish monarchs and churchmen by John Rhind, who also carved the relief of Saint Giles in the tympanum. The metalwork of the west door is by Skidmore. In 2006, new steps and an access ramp were added to the west door by Morris and Steedman Associates.
  In order to improve access to Parliament Square, Burn demolished the westernmost two bays of the outer south nave aisle, including the south porch and door. Burn also removed the western bay from the Holy Blood Aisle at the south of the church and, from the north side of the nave, removed the north porch along with an adjoining bay. The lost porches likely dated from the late-15th century and were matched only by those at St John's Kirk, Perth and St Michael's Kirk, Linlithgow as the grandest two-storey porches on Scottish medieval churches. Like the porch at Linlithgow, on which they were likely based, the porches at St Giles' possessed an entry arch below an oriel window. Burn replicated this arrangement in a new doorway at the west of the Moray Aisle.
  On visiting the church prior to the Burn restoration, Thomas Rickman wrote: "... a few of the windows have the tracery remaining, but from most of them it has been cut away." Views of the church before the Burn restoration show intersecting tracery in some of the choir windows and looping patterns in the windows of the Holy Blood Aisle. Burn retained the tracery of the great east window, which had been restored by John Mylne the Younger in the mid-17th century. In the other windows Burn inserted new tracery based on late medieval Scottish examples.
caption: The south side of St Giles' prior to the Burn restoration
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