Saint Anthony's Chapel (ruins) (Edinburgh)

 church, ruins

Little is known about the origins of St Anthony's Chapel. From the twelfth century, ownership of the land now forming Holyrood Park was divided between the abbeys at Kelso and Holyrood.
It is thought that the area occupied by the chapel was owned by Kelso Abbey, but it seems St. Anthony's Chapel was closely associated with Holyrood Abbey,standing just a few hundred yards away to the northwest. The two were linked by a well-made stone track (now heavily worn) with prominent kerbstones that can in places still be seen, and about three quarters of the way along this track up to the chapel is the spring and carved stone bowl known as St. Anthony's Well.
St. Anthony's Chapel may have been an outlying chapel for Holyrood Abbey, perhaps constructed as a means of getting pilgrims out from under the feet of the monks in the abbey.
There are references to a grant paid for repairs to St. Anthony's Chapel by the Pope in 1426. Details of its demise are, but presumably, like Holyrood Abbey itself, St Anthony's Chapel fell into disuse and disrepair after the Reformation in 1560.
All that remains of the chapel are parts of the north wall plus remnants of another building a little to the south west, which has sometimes been called a hermitage but was probably just a store room. The remaining chapel wall shows signs of vaulting, and it is thought that when complete the building would have comprised a small three-bay chapel, with a three-storey tower at its west end. This odd shape, almost as tall as it was long, supports the idea that the chapel was designed as much to ensure distant visibility as to accommodate worshippers.