‘magnificent for the beauty and extent of its buildings and worthy of everlasting fame’ – the architecture of the Scottish late medieval Church

The 2013 Rhind Lectures by Professor Richard Fawcett
3rd to 5th May 2013

Lecture 5: Looking to the Low Countries
France was not the only European country whose buildings were to be a major source of fresh ideas for Scotland. The Low Countries (modern Belgium and Holland), which became the nation’s principal trading partner through the ports of Bruges, Middelburg and Veere, were the place of origin of much of Europe’s most admired religious art. Scotland’s churches were to become the setting for a great deal of Netherlandish art, including the choir stalls of Melrose Abbey and the magnificent altarpiece commissioned from Hugo van der Goes for Trinity College Chapel in Edinburgh. The churches that Scottish travelers saw in the Netherlands were themselves to be an important provider of inspiration, as reflected in the tower of Dundee parish church or the windows of the Dominican church in St Andrews, and we may assume that the Peter Flemisman who carved statues for Falkland Palace was not the only Fleming to work in Scotland.

The Lectures
The church architecture of late medieval Scotland is particularly fascinating because it is so unlike what is to be seen elsewhere, either within the British Isles or across continental Europe. Indeed, it can be argued that the buildings erected between the later years of the fourteenth century and the middle years of the sixteenth should be regarded as representing the first phase in the nation’s architectural history during which an approach to architectural design took shape that is uniquely Scottish. And yet, for all its distinctive appearance, it was certainly not the result of cultural isolation, but was instead the consequence of a new openness to a wide range of sources of inspiration, including many drawn from mainland Europe. In this series of lectures the likely origins of these ideas will be explored as a prelude to considering how an altogether original architectural synthesis emerged.

The Rhind Lecturer
Richard Fawcett, who is now a part-time professor in the School of Art History of the University of St Andrews, spent most of his career in the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments of Historic Scotland, dealing with the conservation, interpretation and presentation of architectural monuments and buildings. While retaining wider interests, his present research is largely focused on the medieval architecture of Scotland, and especially on the sources of the ideas current in the later middle ages. He has published widely on many aspects of architectural history, and his most recent book is The Architecture of the Scottish Medieval Church (Yale University Press, 2011). He is Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded Corpus of Scottish Medieval Parish Churches research project. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Societies of Antiquaries of London and Scotland. He was appointed OBE in 2008.

Recorded in the Royal Society of Edinburgh.