The Earl and Countess of Rosslyn on the power of Dan Brown
In this extract from their new book about Rosslyn Chapel, the Earl and Countess of Rosslyn recall how Dan Brown’s thriller enabled the meticulous renovation of the 15th century treasure to be completed
Since the St Clairs came to live here in the 11th century, each generation of our family has witnessed a different episode in the history of Rosslyn, its buildings, landscape and cultural heritage. We have played a part in the story of the last 40 years – and it has been an exhilarating though occasionally precarious undertaking. When we first came to Rosslyn together in the late 1970s the castle was an uninhabited ruin and few people were interested in visiting a cold damp chapel, as it then was. We recently came across our handwritten records from 1981 when the income for the Easter week in April was just £46. The total number of visitors for that year was 7,642 and we struggled to cover the running costs and keep the chapel open.
The glorious 15th-century Rosslyn Chapel, one of Scotland’s most extraordinary architectural masterpieces, was founded by the St Clair family, who first came to Scotland soon after the Norman conquest and acquired substantial estates through loyal service to the Scottish crown, also building nearby Rosslyn castle. Sir William St Clair, third Prince of Orkney, ‘a very fair man of great stature, broad bodied, yellow haired, well proportioned, humble, courteous’ was the founder of Rosslyn Chapel. In setting out to build his house for God’s service, Sir William St Clair wanted to make his building truly beautiful, a place full of music and stories. As a result, the chapel is as intricate as a medieval illuminated manuscript: a central scriptural message embellished with decorative carvings and scrolling leaves.
Rosslyn Chapel has often been called a “Bible in stone”. At the time it was built, printing was still in its infancy and bibles were not readily available. The renowned Gutenberg Bible, which heralded the era of the printed book in the western world, was not published until the mid 1450s, so throughout the 15th century stories in stone were a popular alternative, with the added advantage that they could be understood by the many who could not read. And few buildings have as many stories as Rosslyn Chapel.
Far from restricting his stonemasons to working with Christian texts, Sir William clearly encouraged them to take inspiration from the world around them, to weave images relating to the everyday lives of a farming community in amongst the religious and moral tales. As a result, the carvings in this chapel tell us a great deal, both about life in 15th century Scotland and about the contribution made to Scotland’s rich history by the St Clair family.
When Sir William died in 1484 he was buried in his unfinished chapel. His fortunes and titles, diminished over his lifetime, were divided between his three eldest sons and three branches of the St Clairs were created: the Lords St Clair of Dysart; the St Clairs of Rosslyn; and the Sinclairs of Caithness. Sir Oliver St Clair, who inherited the chapel, roofed the choir with its stone vault and blocked up the aisles at the point of the proposed transept walls, creating the chapel we see today.
In the 16th century, following the Reformation, the chapel’s fortunes declined and this paved the way for a very different chapter in Rosslyn’s history. With its abandoned castle and chapel, set high on a hill above winding river and waterfall, Rosslyn combined all the elements of the perfect picturesque landscape. And it was at just this moment that the picturesque landscape as a subject for painting in its own right, rather than as the backdrop to a formal portrait or a classical legend, began to inspire a new generation of artists. In the 17th and 18th centuries, artists such as Paul Sandby, James Nasmyth, Julius Caesar Ibbetson, David Roberts and JMW Turner, all took inspiration from the castle and chapel.
In 1805, Sir Walter Scott wrote a ballad entitled The Lay of the last Minstrel, which fired the imagination of the public. It tells the dramatic story of Rosabelle, daughter of the St Clairs of Rosslyn who drowns when crossing the Firth of Forth in a storm to meet her beloved. Drawing on an ancient family legend, Scott describes how the chapel appears to burst into flame when death approached for a member of the St Clair family. This ballad not only established Scott’s career as a writer, but also sparked an immediate surge of interest in the chapel. Coaches were laid on from central Edinburgh and
“Whilst our conservation plan had identified the scale of the works required, paying for these works was another matter altogether”
people flocked to marvel at its extraordinary 15th century carving.
Rosslyn Chapel has stood on its current site for well over 550 years – a tribute to the skill and craftsmanship of its original builders. Its resilience is in part explained by the absence of timber in the original construction, with everything built in stone. Nevertheless, centuries of exposure to the Scottish weather, the environmental impact of industrial activity and earlier inappropriate repair collectively threatened the structural integrity of the chapel. The ingress of water through the roof resulted in high levels of damp in the building and by 1995 it was clear that a comprehensive conservation plan was required to ensure the survival of the building and so we established the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, a registered charity, to develop this.
In March 1997, a freestanding steel structure was erected to cover the chapel and to enable the stone fabric of the roof vaults to dry outwards, away from the carved interior surfaces. Whilst our conservation plan had identified the scale of the works required, paying for these works was another matter altogether and with the chapel fabric now being protected, we turned our attention to raising the necessary funds.
The answer to that problem presented itself in the most unlikely manner when at first a handful, but soon a tumult, of visitors began to arrive at the chapel clutching a book called the Da Vinci Code, whose author Dan Brown had (entirely unknown to us) chosen Rosslyn as the setting for the concluding narrative. The profile of the book – and the film which followed – very helpfully raised awareness of the chapel with potential funders. In parallel the number of visitors rose steadily, soaring at its peak to just over an astonishing 170,000 a year.
At the start of this project our aim was to approach the conservation task in a way that was historically well informed and to effect the work with understanding and skill, meticulously recording all we did in words and images. By the time the project concluded 16 years later many hundreds of thousands of individual repair treatments had been undertaken and the whole of the exterior has been conserved as though it were the most precious object in a national heritage museum – which is in a sense true. The work has been at the opposite end of the ‘restoration’ spectrum where many stones would have been replaced with new.
The fundamental conservation principle of reversibility was respected at all times and would not have been possible without the scholarship, commitment and ingenuity of our architectural team together with our exceptionally talented stone and stained glass conservators. Our children’s love of Rosslyn has been another source of happiness for us. It gives us great comfort, knowing that one day the responsibility of caring for this extraordinary place and continuing the work of Rosslyn Chapel Trust will fall to them. ● Rosslyn Chapel by The Earl and Countess of Rosslyn is published by Scala Arts and Heritage Publishers in association with Rosslyn Chapel Trust. Now available at £25 from selected bookshops and online at www. rosslyn chapel. com