Sofia Leonard: Window makes Geddes' pioneering work clearer

Published on Saturday 7 November 2009 10:52

I HAVE seen Gareth Edwards' article "It's a window on the past" (News, 4 November) and I congratulated him on highlighting the importance of the discovery of three stained glass panels linked to Sir Patrick Geddes.

There are only three other similar panels extant commissioned by Geddes for the Outlook Tower.

The panel is undeniably a Geddes stained glass window, commissioned by Geddes specially for St Giles House.

St Giles House was acquired by Geddes to relieve the dire conditions in which many students lived at the end of the 19th century, and to provide them with suitable, affordable accommodation and as part of Geddes' regeneration of the Old Town.

As in Mylnes Court, St Giles House was entirely self- governing, with the students assuming full control of its internal management (unheard of at the time), unlike the paternalistic regime of the colleges in Oxford and Cambridge.

The panel shows the typical three doves (The Three Sympathies) surrounding the University of Edinburgh escutcheon. Geddes' motto "vivendo discimus" or "by living we learn" makes it undeniably a Geddes panel.

The symbols of the Union complete the lunette showing the symbolic flowers of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

Sofia Leonard, former Director of the Patrick Geddes Centre for Planning Studies, University of Edinburgh