lies directly at the south-eastern base of Arthur's
Seat, and has long'been one of the daily postal
districts of the city.
Overhung by the green slopes and grey rocks ok
Arthur's Seat, and shut out by its mountainous
mass from every view of the crowded city at its
further base in Duddingston, says a statist, writing
in 1851, a spectator feels himself sequestered from
the busy scenes which he knows to' be in his
immediate vicinity, as he hears their distant hum
upon the passing breezes by the Willow Brae on
the east, or the gorge of the Windy Goule on the
south; and he looks southward and west over a
glorious panorama of beautiful villas, towering ,
'
From the style of the church and the structure of
its arches, it is supposed to date from the epoch of
the introduction of Saxon architecture. A semicircular
arch of great beauty divides the choir from
the chancel, and a Saxon doorway, with fantastic
heads and zig-zag mbuldings, still remains in the
southern face of the tower. The entrance-gate to
its deep, grassy, and sequestered little buryingground,
is still furnished with the antique chain and
collar of durance, the terror of evildoers, named
the jougs, and a time-worn Zouping-on-stone, for the
use of old or obese horsemen.
Some interesting tombs are to be found in the
burying-ground ; among these are the marble obelisk
castles, rich coppice,
hill and valley, magnificent
in semi-tint, in
light and shadow, till
the Pentlands, or the
1 on e 1 y Lam m er m u i r
ranges, close the distance.
The name of this
hamlet and parish has
been a vexed subject
amongst antiquaries,
but as a surname it is
not unknown in Scotland
: thus, among the
missing charters of
Robert Bruce, there is
one to John Dudingstoun
of the lands of
Pitcorthie, in Fife; and
among the gentlemen
GATEWAY OF DUDDINGSTON CHURCH, SHOWING TIIE
JOUCS AND LOUPING-ON-STONE.
slain at Flodden in I 5 I 3
there was Stephen Duddingston of Kildinington,
also in Fife. Besides, there is another place of the
same name in Linlithgowshire, the patrimony of the
Dundases.
The ancient church, with a square tower at its
western end, occupies a green and rocky peninsula
that juts into the clear and calm blue loch. It is
an edifice of great antiquity, and belonged of old
to the Tyronensian Monks of Kelso, who possessed
it, together with the lands of Eastern and Western
Duddingston ; the chartulary of that abbey does not
say from whom they acquired these possessions, but
most probably it was from David I.
Herbert, first abbot of Kelso, a man of great
learning and talent, chamberiain of the kingdom
under Alexander I. and David I., in 1128, granted
the lands of Eastern and Western Duddingston to
Reginald de Bosco for an annual rent of ten marks,
to be paid by him and his heirs for ever.
erected to the memory
of Patrick Haldane of
Gleneagles by his unfortunate
grandson, whose
fate is also recorded
thereon; and that of
James Browne, LLD.,
Advocate, the historian
of the Highlands and
Highland clans, in the
tower of the church.
In the register of
assignations for the
minister's stipends in
the year 1574, presented
in MS. by
Bishop Keith to the
Advocates' Library,
Duddingston is said to
have been a joint dependence
with the
Castle of Edinburgh
upon the Abbey of Holyrood. The old records
of the Kirk Session are only of the year 1631, and
in the preceding year the lands of Prestonfield
were disjoined from the kirk and parish of St.
Cuthbert, and annexed to those of Duddingston.
On the r8th'of May, 1631, an aisle was added
to the church for the use of the Laird of Prestonfield,
his tenants and servants.
David Malcolme, minister here before I 741,
was an eminent linguist in his time, whose writings
were commended by Pinkerton, and quoted with
respect by Gebelin in his Monde Plillit$ and
Bullet in his Mkmoirrs Celtiques; but the church is
chiefly famous for the incumbency of the Rev. John
Thomson, a highly distinguished landscape painter,
who from his early boyhood exhibited a strong
predilection for art, and after being a pupil of
Alexander Nasmyth, became an honorary member
of the Royal Scottish Academy. He became
