The Building

Today the Grade A-Listed Mansfield Traquair Centre is a hub of activity. The lower levels of the building have meeting rooms, office spaces and facilities for up to 70 people to work. The office space is ~7,000ft² (~650m²). Above, the Nave is designed to host a range of events including parties, weddings, filming, and conferences with onsite catering facilities for up to 400 people. The events space is ~7350ft² (680m²). Additionally, there are external gardens accommodating outdoor events and activities.

This unique building was designed by the architect Robert Rowand Anderson, who was appointed by the Catholic Apostolic Church when they outgrew their neo-classical church on the west side of Broughton Street. Key dates surrounding its original design and construction are:

1873: Construction starts with the foundation stone laid on 22 November of this year.

• 1876: The building is largely completed and consecrated.
• 1884: The Narthex and Baptistery are completed.
• 1894: The Baldachino is completed.
• 1876: The three light stained-glass window by Hardman is installed. This was salvaged from the Church’s prior location in Broughton Street.
• 1884 -1886: The plain, non-figurative, grisaille windows by Ballantine are installed in the wheel window and the north and south windows of the narthex.
• 1893-1901: Phoebe Anna Traquair completes the mural cycle in the Nave.

The building operated as a working church until the mid-1900s. The last Catholic Apostolic priest died in 1958 and after use by the Reformed Baptist Church in the 1970’s, the building gradually fell into a slow decline.

In the late 1980s the building was bought by a property company and its main use was as a night club known as Café Graffiti. Although a well-known and significant player in the Edinburgh musical scene of the time, there was a lack of funding to maintain the building, which continued to decay.

In 1992 a group of local residents, concerned about the deterioration of the building and the murals, formed the Friends of the Mansfield Place Church (now known as the Friends of the Mansfield Traquair Centre).

In 1993, the Mansfield Traquair Trust was formed. These groups lobbied various bodies to draw attention to the inevitable loss of an important, but little known, building and its magnificent wall paintings. It was then that the City of Edinburgh Council used its powers to undertake emergency repairs to stop the worst of the leaks and commissioned Historic Scotland, in 1995, to undertake stabilisation work to the murals. These actions slowed the deterioration of the building and ensured the murals were held on the walls.

An exhibition of Phoebe Anna Traquair’s work was also held in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 1993: together with a Friends’ display within the building, this brought further attention to the murals.

The Mansfield Traquair Trust with the help of the City of Edinburgh Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, who was viewed as a potential tenant for the building, commissioned a feasibility study in 1995 to give the Trust an indication of possible repair and conversion costs.

In 1996, having the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations confirmed as the future tenant, the Mansfield Traquair Trust was offered a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (now the National Heritage Lottery Fund). The Trust now had a viable end use, end user and had raised the bulk of the funding

With that in progress the City of Edinburgh Council and the Mansfield Traquair Trust had to resolve the problem of ownership. A full repairs notice was served on the owners in February 1997 followed by a compulsory purchase order in October of that year. The owners contested the CPO and raised an action in the Sheriff Court on the grounds the Council had no reason to serve the CPO. In January 1998 the City of Edinburgh Council authorised the Emergency Repairs notice but unbeknownst to them the building had been sold to a new owner who was an intermediary for the Mansfield Traquair Trust.

Repair and conversion work began in 2000 and was completed in 2002. The restoration of the murals was completed in 2005.