Holy Corner is a colloquial name for a small area of Edinburgh, Scotland, and (along with Church Hill) is part of the area more properly known as Burghmuirhead, itself part of the lands of Greenhill. Holy Corner lies between the areas of Bruntsfield and Morningside.
The name derives from the crossroads, where Morningside Road, Colinton Road and Chamberlain Road meet; on each of the corners of the crossroad is a church (although two are slightly set back.) Church Hill is the small area to the south and includes the Church Hill Theatre, formerly yet another church. Beyond is Morningside, with the former parish church (now part of Napier University) only just beyond Church Hill. The north end of the crossroads leads into Bruntsfield Place. Merchiston is along Colinton Road to the west.
The churches of Holy Corner are: Christ Church (Scottish Episcopal Church), Morningside United (Church of Scotland and United Reformed Church) and Morningside Baptist Church (Baptist Church). Morningside Baptist Church purchased Central Hall, Tollcross in June 2011 and now hold services there. MBC sold their Holy Corner building Elim Church in March 2012. The fourth of the churches has been turned into the Eric Liddell centre. There is also a Bank of Scotland branch in the north west corner.
A short distance away atop Church Hill is the Church Hill Theatre which was built as a church by Edinburgh architect Hippolyte Blanc (who also designed Christ Church). Not far beyond that is the former Morningside Parish Church (Church of Scotland) which is now a part of Napier University, the congregation having been merged with another church towards the south of Morningside in the late 1980s.
Other features in the immediate area include Napier University's Merchiston campus, which incorporates Merchiston Castle (or tower), birthplace and former home of John Napier, the mathematician and alleged necromancer. Merchiston Tower is also the ancient seat of Clan Napier.
The former site of a garden centre in the north west corner, next to a branch of the Bank of Scotland, was transformed into a compact "metropolitan" supermarket for Tesco, with adjacent coffee house and furniture shop, in 2006.
Famous quotes containing the words holy and/or corner:
“There is a very holy and a very terrible isolation for the conscience of every man who seeks to read the destiny in affairs for others as well as for himself, for a nation as well as for individuals. That privacy no man can intrude upon. That lonely search of the spirit for the right perhaps no man can assist.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Knighterrantry is a most chuckleheaded trade, and it is tedious hard work, too, but I begin to see that there is money in it, after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in it, as a business, for I wouldn’t. No sound and legitimate business can be established on a basis of speculation. A successful whirl in the knighterrantry line—now what is it when you blow away the nonsense and come down to the cold facts? It’s just a corner in pork, that’s all.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)