Soutra Aisle

Soutra Aisle stands on a low hill beside the B6368 road in the Scottish Borders, about half a mile from the A68 near Fala. It is the ruined chancel of the House of the Holy Trinity, a 12th-century church that once belonged to a larger complex. That complex also included a hospital and a friary run by Augustinian monks. The site was founded by Malcolm IV in 1164 after he granted the lands of Brotherstanes and Lyndean to the order. The church lay close to the Via Regia, the main route linking the north of Scotland to the Borders abbeys. The hospital was intended mainly for poor travellers rather than monks. In 1439 Thomas Lauder, later Bishop of Dunkeld, served as its master. A Roman supplication from 1444 describes the place as a windy hilltop site where fierce gusts and cold spells were common. By the 1460s a scandal involving Stephen Fleming led the Crown to take most of the hospital’s estates. The buildings were gradually dismantled, leaving only the chancel, which became the burial aisle of the Pringle family in 1686. Archaeologists have found traces of the hospital’s work in rare seeds from medicines gathered across the known world. Dr Brian Moffat’s study estimated that between the mid-12th and mid-15th centuries up to 300 people lived and worked here to care for visitors and patients. Today the roofless stone walls and the surrounding grassy slope show where the church once stood. A quiet lane leads to the site, offering views across rolling farmland towards the Pentland Hills.