Rosslyn Chapel

Way back when, I promised to write a post about our visit to Rosslyn Chapel (of Knights Templar fame) when we were at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival earlier this year.   Having just seen a post about a friend's visit to said chapel I thought it was about time I kept my promise.  Sadly, my memory hasn't retained all the interesting details we heard and overheard from the guide as we went around but I'll do my best.  You can link to the Rosslyn Chapel website for more information and there's also an App that gives you photographs of the interior, since the public is not supposed to take photographs inside.

 The exterior is almost as ornate as the interior.

 The stained glass was beautiful but I had to content myself with photographs taken from the outside.

 A sneaky glimpse through the door with visitors listening to a talk by one of the guides.

 This is the south aisle (I think).

 There are said to be over 100 Green Man figures inside the chapel.  There are also many carvings of musical instruments.

 This is Woman with Goose.

Carvings inside and out appear to show corn which was not known about when the chapel was built but other opinion is that it is an idealised carving and only coincidentally resembles corn. 

Photographs are actually courtesy of my lovely husband as my camera wasn't up to the job.

One story of the chapel has stayed in my mind and that's the tale of the Sculptor's apprentice who, while his master was away, finished one of the columns in the chapel to a higher standard than his master and without reference to the original design pattern.  When the master returned he was so enraged that he hit the apprentice on the head with a hammer and killed him.  Legend has it that the master's image was carved on a column opposite so that he could forever gaze on his apprentice's work (Wikipedia link here).

Here's the link to Chris Gray's blogpost that spurred me on to finally blog about our visit.