St Giles Kirk - 1544

St Giles’ was the most important church in the burgh of Edinburgh (although it was not a cathedral until the 1630s). In 1544 St Giles’ was still a Catholic Church. It was lavishly decorated with statues and stained glass, and housed the altars of the local craft guilds. The feast day of St Giles (on 1st September) was marked by a religious procession along the Royal Mile. In 1558 Protestant Reformers disrupted the religious festivities, throwing a statue of St Giles to the ground, and smashing it upon the paving stones. Two years later Scotland officially rejected Catholicism, and St Giles’ became a Protestant place of worship.

Sarah Kennedy, Iain Oliver, Bess Rhodes, Catherine Anne Cassidy, Adeola Fabola, John McCaffrey, Alan Miller

Richard Fawcett (University of St Andrews), John Lawson (CECAS), Bess Rhodes (University of St Andrews)

A digital landscape was created using survey data and height map. Models were created in 3D modelling programs and imported into UNREAL (a cross-platform game engine for creating virtual worlds). The models were then scaled, orientated and assembled. The landscapes were populated with flora and fauna. Where applicable, models of characters and animals were imported and animated.