New College Edinburgh, Building Photos, Images, Design

New College, Edinburgh : Architecture

New College, Mound Place, Old Town, Edinburgh, Scotland

New College Edinburgh

Location: Mound Place, Old Town, central Edinburgh

Address: New College, Mound Place, Old Town, Edinburgh EH1 2LX

Phone: 0131 650 8900

New College Edinburgh: image © Adrian Welch

Home of the Free Church since 1846. In 1937 The Faculty of Divinity moved in. Gothic library and Rainy Hall are key rooms. The initial home of the devolved Scottish Parliament which is now based at Holyrood: New Scottish Parliament

building photo © Adrian Welch Sep 2006 with lumix camera

photo © Adrian Welch 2006

The building in context from Princes Street Gardens – Hub to left beyond, RSA in foreground to right:

Edinburgh buildings photo © Adrian Welch

Theology has been taught at the University of Edinburgh since its foundation in 1583. New College (NC) was established in 1843, and became part of the University of Edinburgh – merging with the Faculty of Divinity – in 1935.

New College emerged out of the Disruption of 1843, when over a third of the ministers and perhaps half the lay membership left the established Church of Scotland in protest against what they perceived as state efforts to undermine the Church’s spiritual independence and integrity.

Against all odds, the outgoing clergy and laity formed the Free Church of Scotland as a new national Church, free from state connection and acknowledging only the headship of Christ.

Amid the idealism and fervour aroused by the Disruption, the struggling Free Church founded NC as an institution for educating not simply a learned ministry, but a new Scottish Christian leadership.

The hope was that these new leaders would guide the nation through a new Reformation, reassert the spiritual independence of the Church, and elevate the religious and moral conditions of the Scottish people.

For a time, NC was envisaged as a free university, a citadel of conscience which would stand against the system of patronage and privilege that for centuries had enabled the Crown and members of the gentry and aristocracy to dominate the religious and intellectual life of the nation.
source: http://www.ed.ac.uk/divinity/about/history

building photo © Adrian Welch, May 2006