Forty-Five Years Ago Today

The reason I went to Edinburgh so soon after arriving in the UK in March 1968 was to visit Rosslyn Chapel. My maternal grandmother, Evelyn St. Clair Werth, had told her grandchildren many times about this ancient chapel and our supposed connection to it. That would take too long to describe here and yet has yet to be proven to my satisfaction, but here is what I wrote to my grandmother about that memorable and significant visit:

(I) took a bus out to Roslin -- 42-cent round trip, about 8 miles out, in Roslin village -- old stone houses built in rows; I felt as though I'd been transported back 100 years (except for the cars and street lights). I had to walk a mile down a narrow country lane to reach the Chapel. It is surrounded by an old stone wall. Immediately inside is an old gatehouse-type place, half of which is the "office" of the caretaker-guide, a dear white-haired old man, the other half being an untouristy antique shop.

I was the only one about for quite a while (no wonder, considering the wretched weather!) so the old man gave me a private tour. It is perhaps a hundred yards from the gatehouse to the perfect little chapel set like a jewel on immaculately cared-for grounds. The heavy hinged door opens and a certain smell of hundreds of years and the hush of centuries of worshippers assails you. And for me there was also a feeling of "arrival," of reaching the end of what was, in effect, a pilgrimage -- not only for myself, but also for you and Ip and Tot and all the other St. Clairs who have never or will never see this place where our ancestors worshipped. And it made me proud that the St. Clair who now owns it, though in rather poor finances, yet prefers to keep the Chapel "in the family" rather than let it be held as an historical landmark by the Scottish government.

I went down the worn steps into the crypt, used for worship while the Chapel was being built -- so old... I had both a sense of the ephemerality of my own life and the link between generations of people over time here, in a stronger sense than ever anywhere else. I said a short prayer for all who share the name St. Clair, and went back out into the driving wind and rain to get the bus back to Edinburgh.


(I took the chapel photo above on my beloved half-frame Olympus Pen-F, my first "real camera," using Kodachrome 64 slide film, and later had this 5 x 7 enlargement made. In 1993, my children and their father and I visited Rosslyn Chapel -- they had 35mm cameras with manual focus lenses. I'm grateful that we visited well before photography was forbidden in the chapel.)