On your left, look for the compact gray-stone church wedged between taller buildings, with a steep gable and a row of narrow, pointed Gothic windows like stone eyebrows.
This is Old Saint Paul’s, an Episcopal church sitting right in the Old Town’s tight urban squeeze... which feels appropriate, because for a long time Episcopalians in Scotland had to live a bit squeezed themselves. The congregation goes back to the late 1600s, when the established Church of Scotland moved firmly toward Presbyterian governance. A group from Saint Giles’ didn’t go along with that shift, and in 1689 their bishop, Alexander Rose, walked out with a good chunk of his people. Not exactly a quiet disagreement over meeting minutes. Think “theological breakup,” but with more cold stone and fewer text messages.
They set up shop nearby in an old wool store in Carrubber’s Close. Wool today is cozy; wool then was commerce, grime, and survival. And the politics around this congregation got even hotter. Many Scottish Episcopalians stayed loyal to the Jacobite cause, backing James and his heirs against the Hanoverian kings. Members here were wrapped up in the 1715 and 1745 risings, and one Saint Paul’s member even carried word back to Edinburgh after Bonnie Prince Charlie won at Prestonpans. The city gates were shut against the defeated Hanoverian army... a little act of civic stagecraft with very real consequences.
After the Jacobite defeats, the government didn’t exactly send apology flowers. Episcopal worship and churches faced legal persecution. It wasn’t until Bonnie Prince Charlie died in 1788 that the Jacobite shadow finally started to lift. That same year, the Scottish Episcopal Synod agreed to pray for King George the Third in all Episcopal churches-basically, “All right, we’re done with the exiled prince thing.” History is often just people deciding which name they can say out loud.
The building you’re seeing now is later-completed in 1883 by architects William Hay and George Henderson in an Early English Gothic style. It cost about £3,500 back then-roughly around $550,000 in today’s money, give or take-proof that even in the 1880s, renovations were never “just a quick fix.” Inside, there’s a hammerbeam roof with wooden gargoyles, a carved oak pulpit with saints, and a dramatic high altar with grapevine carving and seven lamps for the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
And then there’s the Warriors Chapel, added in 1926 as a World War One memorial. The rector who organized it, Canon Albert Ernest Laurie, served as an army chaplain in France and won the Military Cross twice for tending wounded soldiers under fire. One of his assistants, Charles Gustave Meister, also earned the medal... and was killed in 1918. The chapel holds rolls of honor from both World Wars, including one woman listed for World War One-Sybil Lewis. It also keeps a small iron “Martyrs’ Cross” that once hung in the Grassmarket opposite the gallows-the last thing condemned prisoners saw. That’s a hard detail to shake.
When you’re ready, Fruitmarket Gallery is a 2-minute walk heading west.
