John Knox House
Encyclopedia
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, reputed to have been owned and lived in by Protestant Reformer
Scottish Reformation
The Scottish Reformation was Scotland's formal break with the Papacy in 1560, and the events surrounding this. It was part of the wider European Protestant Reformation; and in Scotland's case culminated ecclesiastically in the re-establishment of the church along Reformed lines, and politically in...
John Knox
John Knox
John Knox was a Scottish clergyman and a leader of the Protestant Reformation who brought reformation to the church in Scotland. He was educated at the University of St Andrews or possibly the University of Glasgow and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1536...
during the 16th century, but known not to have been (Knox's house was on Warriston Close, where a plaque correctly marks the site).
The house itself was built from 1490 onwards, featuring a fine wooden gallery and hand-painted ceiling
Scottish Renaissance painted ceilings
A number of Scottish houses and castles built between 1540 and 1640 have painted ceilings. This is a distinctive national style, though there is common ground with similar work elsewhere, especially in France, Spain and Scandinavia. Most surviving examples are painted simply on the boards and...
. It belonged to the Mossman family, Edinburgh goldsmiths who refashioned the crown of Scotland for James V. Over the next few centuries many decorations and paintings were added, and the house and its contents are now a museum.
The building is owned by the Church of Scotland
Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland, known informally by its Scots language name, the Kirk, is a Presbyterian church, decisively shaped by the Scottish Reformation....
and is now administered as part of the new, adjacent Scottish Storytelling Centre
Scottish Storytelling Centre
The Scottish Storytelling Centre the world's first purpose built modern centre for live storytelling, located on the High Street in Edinburgh's Royal Mile, Scotland, United Kingdom. It was formally opened on 1 June 2006 by Patricia Ferguson MSP, Minister for Culture in the Scottish Executive...
.
It has only been known as "John Knox's House" since the mid-19th century, at which time Victorian romantics sought to find sites of historic occurrences. This house looked old enough, but no research was done at the time to establish the rights or wrongs of the claim. The house was owned by a prominent Catholic at the time of Knox. It is unlikely he ever visited the house, but he would have been familiar with it.