Notes from the North 3

 How many of Edinburgh’s many churches are on the regular tourist trail? There’s St Giles Cathedral, otherwise known as the High Kirk of Edinburgh, and Greyfriars Kirk or at least its graveyard. Further down the Royal Mile there’s the Canongate Kirk where the royals have been known to worship. But Old St Paul’s on Jeffrey Street – why would anyone go there? 

It’s easy to miss it, squashed into a site right next to Carrubbers Close and more or less opposite the back entrance of Waverley Station. All you see is a narrow façade pressed up against the hill behind, a sign identifying it as Edinburgh's oldest episcopalian church and an arched doorway

 

 

But beyond that door are thirty-three steps which lead up towards a carved stone calvary and the entrance to the church itself.


The interior is dark on the January afternoon when I visit. Candles make weak pools of light here and there. Seven sanctuary lights flicker above the ornate high altar. 



There are many angels flying about and the unmistakeable scent of incense. Even in the dimness there is plenty to delight the eye. This place harks back to a time long before the onset of presbyterian austerity. Only the Memorial Chapel is brightly lit. Above its plain beech altar hangs the four-part painting, Still, by Scottish artist Alison Watt. 



On the left-hand wall are recorded the names of one hundred and forty-six men, most of them local parishioners, killed in World War One: John, Edward, Douglas, Hugh, Alexander, James, Robert, Malcolm, on and on, the same names over and over again. There is just one woman’s name on that list, right at the end, like an after-thought. Sybil Lewis. 




Of course there could and should be others and Sybil Lonie Lewis should be better known than she is. She is one of the UK’s earliest women doctors, a graduate in 1905 from Edinburgh. But there is more to say than that. Sybil Lewis went out to Serbia in 1915 to work as a volunteer with Scottish Women’s Hospitals. Here are the opening lines from the diary she kept, which has never been published and is held by Oxford University.

 

‘Let it be known unto all whom it may concern or interest that I, Sybil Lonie Lewis, Medical Practitioner, having been accepted by the Committee of the Scottish Women’s Hospital, for foreign service and provided with uniform and instructions to proceed to Kraghavtaz, Serbia, left my native shore with a party of 21, 1 other doctor and 19 Sisters, on board the Hospital ship The Gloucester Castle, on June 25th 1915.’ 

 

When Serbia was overrun by the enemy Sybil and her fellow-doctors were taken prisoner and held in dire conditions in Hungary. They were released in early 1916 and she made her way back to Edinburgh. But by August of the same year she was back in Serbia again. This time she was helping both the Serbian army and the civilian population in Macedonia. She returned home in very poor health in December 1917 and died aged 43 in March the following year. Her ashes are immured in one of the pillars of the church. For Sybil Lewis alone Old St Pauls is worth a visit. 

 

It was one of those serendipitous encounters that led me to the church. I was finding out what Abbeyhill had to offer (quite a bit as it turns out) and called in at the Citadel Bookshop on Montrose Terrace. It is run by Janani and Alan Spence who open it every afternoon to sell an eclectic selection of new and second-hand books. Alan Spence, originally of Glasgow, sometime Makar of Edinburgh and artistic director of Aberdeen’s Word festival between 1999 and 2011, is first and foremost a meditative poet. I think that’s a reasonable way to describe him, given he runs the Sri Chinmoy Meditation Centre with his wife - but he has written plays and novels as well as poems. 


 

I wouldn’t have known to visit Old St Pauls if I hadn’t met Alan in his bookshop. Here is one of his haiku, published in the book that celebrated the creation of Alison Watt’s Old St Pauls Memorial Chapel painting (the book is out of print):

the dark chapel
white rose a chalice
of light

 

He has written many others – for example in his collection Glasgow Zen (still in print): 

 

‘On the oneness of self and the universe’
ITS AW WAN
TAE ME

 

- 3 lines and 17 syllables of Zen profundity and keen-eyed Glasgow humour.

 

Celtic Connections is in full swing over in Glasgow and as January flips into February I shall go and hear South Uist Gàidhlig singer Kathleen MacInnes, piper and flautist Alana MacInnes and Liam O Maonlai in a programme of Irish and Scottish Gaelic music. 


The days are lengthening little by little. The sparrows are sparring in the back garden. Little clumps of snowdrops are shining out of last year’s leaves. . 

 



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