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.
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