Knight Templar's Part XII Roslyn

 In the Temple and the Lodge Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh describe the area of one of the Sinclair estates:

 “ Some three miles south of  Edinburgh  lies the village of Roslyn. It consists of a single street with a parade of shops, houses, and at the end of the street two pubs. 

The village begins at the edge of a steep wooded gorge, the Valley of the North Esk. Seven miles away, where the North Esk joins the South, lies the former precepratory of Balantrodoc now simply called the Temple.

The valley of the North Esk is a mysterious haunted place. Carved into the large moss covered rock, a wild pagan head gazes at the passer-by.

Further downstream, in a cave behind a waterfall, there is what appears to be another huge head with cavernous eyes—perhaps a weathered carving, perhaps a natural product of the elements.

  The path leading through the valley is crossed by numerous ruined stone buildings and passes by a cliff face with a dressed stone window. 

  Behind this window is a veritable warren of tunnels, sufficient to conceal a great number of men and accessible by only a hidden entrance.

 One had to be lowered down a well to enter. According to legend, Bruce found refuge here during one of many crises that beset his campaigns.

 Perched on the very edge of the gorge is an eerily strange edifice, Rosalyn Chapel. Ones first impression is that it seems that it appears to be a cathedral in miniature.

 Not that it is particularly small. It is so overloaded, so dripping with Gothic carvings and floridly intricate embellishments, that it seems somehow to be a truncated part of something greater—like a fragment of Chartres transplanted to the top of a Scottish hill.

  It conveys a sense of great Gothic lushness, as if the builders, after lavishing their most dazzling skills and costly materials upon the structure, simply stopped abruptly. 

 The fact is that they did, they ran short of money. Rosalyn Chapel was originally intended to be part of something much greater, the ‘Lady chapel’ of a vast collegiate church, a full sized cathedral on the French scale! 

 In the absence of funds the project was never realized. From the existing west wall massive blocks of stone jut forth, awaiting others, which never arrived.