Edinburgh - St Giles Kirk c1544
About
Our depiction of Edinburgh and the Canongate was inspired by a drawing in the British Library made by the English military engineer Richard Lee, who accompanied Hertford’s forces in 1544. Lee’s drawing is the earliest moderately realistic picture of Edinburgh and would influence how the English portrayed the Scottish capital into the seventeenth century (a variant of Lee’s illustration is included in John Speed’s atlas, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, published c.1611). It is possible that Lee’s plan was created to explain the outcome of the Edinburgh expedition to Henry VIII of England. On 19 May 1544 the Earl of Hertford informed Henry that he was sending him ‘Master Lee, who I assure your Majesty hath served in the journey both honestly and willingly, [and] doth bring unto your Highness a plat of Leith and Edinburgh so as your Majesty shall perceive the situations of the same, which is undoubtedly set forth as well as is possible.’
Gallery
Historical Research
St Giles’ was traditionally the most important church in the burgh of Edinburgh (although it was not a cathedral until the 1630s). Before the Scottish Reformation of 1560, St Giles’ was a Catholic Church. It was lavishly decorated with statues and stained glass, and housed the altars of the local craft guilds. Until the late 1550s the feast day of St Giles (on 1st September) was marked by a procession along the Royal Mile. In 1558 Protestant Reformers disrupted the religious festivities, casting a statue of St Giles to the ground and smashing it upon the paving stones. Less than two years later Scotland officially rejected Catholicism, and St Giles’ became a Protestant place of worship. Today St Giles’ Kirk is regarded as the mother church of Presbyterianism.
Design and Creation
Firstly, a digital landscape was created using survey data and height maps. Following extensive historical research and collaboration with specialists, 3D models are created and imported into UNREAL Engine (a cross-platform game engine for creating virtual worlds). Models are textured, scaled, oriented and assembled. Scenes are created and populated with appropriate objects, including furniture and artefacts. Landscapes populated with flora and fauna. Weather settings and atmospheric lighting. Clothing and characters researched, created, imported and animated.
Explore this Reconstruction
Team
- Authors: Sarah Kennedy, Iain Oliver, Bess Rhodes, Catherine Anne Cassidy, Adeola Fabola, John McCaffrey, Alan Miller
- Specialist Advisors: Richard Fawcett (University of St Andrews), John Lawson (CECAS), Bess Rhodes (University of St Andrews)