West Register House

West Register House, on the west side of Charlotte Square in Edinburgh's New Town, is one of the most prominent buildings in the city — its great green dome a landmark on the skyline, closing the long western view down George Street. Although it now houses part of the National Records of Scotland, it was built as a church, St George's, and for a century and a half it served as one of the principal churches of the New Town. Its story is a notable one in the religious and architectural history of Edinburgh.

The building's site, in the centre of the western side of Charlotte Square, had been set aside for a church in James Craig's original plan for the New Town — the great Georgian expansion of Edinburgh laid out in the eighteenth century. The square itself, with its elegant terraces, was designed by the celebrated architect Robert Adam, and a church was intended to crown its western side and balance the composition. The church was eventually designed by Robert Reid, following a similar but more intricate plan by Adam, and built between 1811 and 1814. Though originally projected to cost £18,000, the final bill came to £33,000 — a reflection of its ambition. Its façade centres on a grand Ionic portico, above which rises a substantial copper dome on a tall, columned drum, topped by a gilt cupola and cross; this dome, weathered to a soft green, is one of the most distinctive features of the Edinburgh skyline.

St George's Church opened in 1814 as the Church of Scotland parish church for the western half of the New Town, serving the wealthy and fashionable residents of the square and its surroundings. In its early years it was notable for the ministries of two leading evangelical clergymen, Andrew Mitchell Thomson and Robert Smith Candlish. Thomson established a strong musical tradition at St George's, which continued under a succession of distinguished organists and choirmasters, including Alexander Mackenzie. Candlish was a major figure in the great religious crisis of nineteenth-century Scotland, and in 1843 he led a significant portion of the congregation out of the established church during the Disruption, when the Free Church of Scotland was formed.

By the early 1960s, however, severe structural problems had become apparent in the church building, and it was found to be unsafe. The congregation moved elsewhere, and the church was closed. Rather than demolish so prominent a landmark, it was decided to convert the building for a new use: between 1964 and 1970 the interior was gutted and remodelled to house the records of the nation, and it reopened as West Register House, an annexe of what is now the National Records of Scotland, complementing the General Register House at the east end of Princes Street. In the conversion the church's fine interior fittings, including a tall pulpit by the cabinetmaker William Trotter, were lost, but the great dome and the noble exterior were preserved.

Today West Register House continues to serve the public as a repository and reading room for Scotland's historical records, a fitting and dignified new use for a building that remains, in its outward form, one of the masterpieces of the New Town. Though no longer a church, it preserves the architectural splendour of St George's, and its dome still presides over Charlotte Square as it has for more than two centuries.

The building stands on Charlotte Square, in the heart of Edinburgh's Georgian New Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The elegant terraces of the square, including the Georgian House and Bute House (the official residence of Scotland's First Minister), lie all around, along with Princes Street and its gardens, the National Gallery of Scotland, the shops and galleries of the New Town, and, across the valley, the Old Town and Edinburgh Castle, all within easy reach.

From its design as the church to crown Charlotte Square in the plans of Craig and Adam, through its building by Robert Reid in 1811–14, its century and a half as St George's Church with its evangelical ministers and musical tradition, to its conversion into West Register House in the 1960s, the building gathers the history of the New Town into one structure. A former church and a landmark of Georgian Edinburgh, crowned by its famous green dome, it remains one of the noblest buildings in the city — a church transformed into a home for the records of the nation.