CANONGATE KIRK AND KIRKYARD

The kirk was built in 1688 with funds left by the late Thomas Moodie of Edinburgh for the purpose of providing an additional place of worship for the people of the Burgh of the Canongate who formerly worshipped in the old Parish Church which was in fact from the time of the Reformation, Holyrood Abbey.

Prince Charles Edward Stuart's prisoners from the Battle of Prestonpans in 1745 were confined 'in the Jail and Kirk of the Canongate'. The Mercat Cross of the Canongate now stands to the right of the main entrance.

Among the famous people buried in the kirkyard are Adam Smith, the economist; Mrs Agnes McLehose, Robert Burns' 'Clarinda' and Robert Fergusson, the Edinburgh poet (1750-1774), who died in the Edinburgh asylum after injuring his head during an election frolic. Robert Burns was greatly inspired by Fergusson's poems, 'Rhyme I had given up, but meeting with Fergusson's Scotch poems I strung my wildly-sounding, rustic Iyre with emulating vigour.' In 1787, Burns paid to have a headstone erected at Fergusson's grave with the following inscription on the back: 'By special grant of the Managers to Robert Burns, who erected this stone, this burial place is to remain ever sacred to the memory of Robert Fergusson.' On the front of the stone is inscribed Burns' own verse:

No sculptured Marble here nor pompous lay
No storied Urn nor animated Bust
This simple Stone directs Pale Scotia's way
To pour her Sorrows o'er her Poets Dust.