Next door to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Royal Family's official Scottish base, stands the ruined abbey that gave the palace its name, and beyond that lies a beautiful stretch of gardens that was once a royal hunting preserve. Quite a collection!
The Abbey of Holyrood predates the palace by about 400 years, and was destroyed less than a hundred years after the palace was built. As with most such histories, it's... well... complicated.
The Abbey was started in 1128 by King David I, who was deeply religious. He had been bequeathed a 'holy rood' or cross by his mother, Saint Margaret; some say it contained a relic of the 'True Cross.' At any rate, the Abbey was built, occupied by Augustinian monks, and provided a lodging for the king in its guesthouse.
Founded by royals, and at the end of a Royal Mile that led to the fortified Edinburgh Castle above the city, it became the scene of important events. In 1177, a Papal legate met the king there; in 1189 a council met to plan a ransom for the Scottish king William the Lion who had been captured in a dynastic war with English and French forces. The tax to pay the ransom and the terms of the treaty left Scotland subject for a time to control by France.
The abbey was also the scene of the occasional meetings of the Scottish Parliament, which sat there seven times between 1256 and 1410. In 1328 it was the site where Robert the Bruce signed a peace treaty between England and Scotland.
Aside from these public events, the Abbey became even more involved with the royal family's affairs; one of the abbey's buildings was described as the 'royal lodgings.' David II was the first of a number of kings to be buried there, and James II was born, crowned, married and buried within its walls. James III and Margaret of Denmark were married there; they were the last to live in the royal lodgings—in 1501, their son James IV built the Palace next door.
Another history note: Margaret's father, King Christian I, king of Denmark, Norway and Sweden was too broke to provide a dowry for his daughter, but solved the problem by pawning the Orkneys to Scotland for 50,000 florins and the Shetlands for 8,000. Despite a number of attempts, the pawn was never redeemed.
In the 1540s, in a war called the 'Rough Wooing,' Henry VIII tried to force the marriage of Mary, later Queen of Scots (and before that of France!) to marry his son Prince Edward. In the process, Edinburgh was sacked, and palace and abbey suffered damage. Mary was sent to France for safety, and her mother, Mary of Guise supervised rebuilding of both.
But by then, the Reformation had become as serious an issue in Scotland as elsewhere in Europe, and militant Protestants attacked many Catholic churches; one was the newly-restored Abbey of Holyrood. Although the Catholic Mary came to the throne two years later in 1561, it did not seem a good idea to put money into re-rebuilding.
The choir, chapter house and transepts were pulled down in 1570, leaving the nave to serve as a parish church for the surrounding neighborhood. When the Catholic James VII came to the throne in 1686, he claimed it back as a royal chapel, and forced the Protestant congregation to find a new church. Two years later, in the Glorious Revolution, when James was forced to abdicate in favor of William and Mary, mobs smashed the royal tombs in the church.
But, you may be wondering: How did it get to be the roofless wreck we see today? No politics there, just a failure of engineering. By 1750, the old timber roof trusses were several hundred years old and showed signs of decay. They were replaced with stone vaults and slabs. The weight was too much for the ancient walls, and while it took several years, in 1768 the roof collapsed. And so it has been since, despite repeated proposals to rebuild.
The work being done now is not to rebuild, but to prevent further collapse.
But if the abbey is, clearly, beyond repair, the gardens nearby are flourishing. And gardens, plural, is worth noting here. The first gardens on the site were herb and vegetable gardens tended by the monks, but when the Palace was built, more land was annexed to provide the royals with space for hunting, hawking, archery, tennis and even a menagerie with lions and tigers and bears (Oh, my!)
In 1670, part of the grounds were set aside as a small 'physic garden' to produce medicinal herbs and to teach students at the medical school of the University about them, as well as to supply local pharmacists. Its keeper produced Scotland's first botanical publication, Hortus Medicus Edinburgensis, which describes plants such as the Common Hounds-Tongue which was used to treat everything from piles and persistent coughs to baldness.
By Queen Victoria's time, the physic garden and much else was gone, and the gardens were in a state of neglect, since the royal family had not used the palace for many years. The area nearby was populated with slums and industrial buildings, such as the brewery that only a few years ago gave way to the new Scottish Parliament building. But Victoria was partial to Scotland, and her husband, Prince Albert, was enthusiastic about gardens.
Albert created a new approach to the palace and gardens that avoided the sight of its unsavory surroundings, in the process removing some garden areas and creating others, with carefully selected plantings and pathways that encouraged spending time there.
This monument marks the spot where Charles I was crowned in Scotland
Out of sight, there are several greenhouses to provide plantings and flowers for official events, such as the monarch's annual Edinburgh Garden Party, that hosts up to 8,000 guests (not all at once!) in the gardens, where they consume 15,000 cups of tea, 9,000 strawberry tarts and 7,000 sandwiches.
All in all, the Holyrood complex packs a lot into a fairly small area!
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