Dawyck Chapel

Dawyck Chapel stands in the Scottish Borders within the Dawyck Botanic Gardens, a regional garden of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. The chapel lies eight miles south-west of Peebles and a similar distance south-east of Biggar on the B712 road. Its name appears in records as ‘Dawic’ and ‘Dauwic’ around 1200, possibly from Gaelic and Old English elements meaning an ox-camp or dwelling. Until the Reformation in 1598 it served as a chapelry of Stobo Parish before becoming an independent parish. The chapel was suppressed in 1742 and its stipend merged with those of Stobo and Drumelzier. The present building dates from 1837 when Sir John Murray Naesmyth demolished the ruins to create a new chapel and family mausoleum. The chapel remains private property but is used for weddings. It still holds a probable medieval font and a bell recast in 1791 from an original dated 1642. The Naesmyth family owned the estate from 1691 until 1897, when Mrs Alexander Balfour bought it; her grandson later donated the gardens to the nation in 1978. Visitors find the chapel set among the Dawyck Botanic Gardens, where the 4-acre glebe once carried pasturage rights for a horse, two cows and forty sheep. The gardens form an outstation of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and surround the chapel with cultivated landscapes. The chapel’s interior includes the old font and the recast bell, while its exterior reflects the 19th-century rebuilding. The wider estate traces its ownership through the Veitch, Naesmyth and Balfour families over more than five centuries.