A £7m overhaul for Da Vinci Code chapel

ROSSLYN Chapel, the 15th century masterpiece whose mysterious carvings and star role in The Da Vinci Code book has made it one of Scotland's top visitor attractions, is to get a £7.2 million overhaul.

Grants of £4.5 million from Heritage Lottery Fund and £2.7 million from Historic Scotland will pay for a new waterproof roof, allowing for the unsightly metal scaffolding and canopy over the chapel to be removed.

A seven-year programme of conservation and repair is also planned, targeting the stained glass windows and stonework to the Victorian baptistery, and creating a new visitor centre to accommodate tens of thousands of tourists every year.

The Culture Secretary, Patricia Ferguson, said: "This building does matter and it matters because of its unique mystery, architecture, and carvings, and we want to make sure many more generations of Scots admire and enjoy it."

Last year 120,000 people visited the chapel, up from just 30,000 in 2000. This followed the 2003 publication of The Da Vinci Code, the massive best-seller by Dan Brown. This book and others have theorised that the chapel and its elaborate carvings held hidden secrets and treasures.

Andrew Russell, managing trustee of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, said he now hoped to "manage down" visitors closer to 60,000.

"We hope that the association with The Da Vinci Code will die away into a more targeted kind of audience," he said.

The funds are part of a £13 million overhaul.

Plans include properly heating the building through Victorian ducts under the floor, rather than the standing electric heaters currently used.

The metal covering over Rosslyn has allowed the building's walls and roof to dry out over the last ten years, and a new wooden roof may now be built.

A new visitor centre is designed to take some of the "footfalls" pressure off the chapel when as many as 1,000 people come through on peak days.

The Countess of Rosslyn, whose husband's family have owned the chapel since it was built, said: "It's the start of the road rather than the end of the road.

"We will be able to preserve it through this generation as it's been preserved through generations from the 15th century."

It was important to manage visitors to preserve the spirit of the chapel, she said. "The magic is the quietness."

• THE restoration of Rosslyn Chapel relies, as so often, on reversing earlier conservation work. Many of the major problems with Rosslyn Chapel's stonework date back to the mistakes in the 1950s.

They included coating the interior of the building with a thin layer of slurry or cement, meant to hold the famous carvings together. The roof, made of a thin layer of stone, was covered with asphalt. Years later the building had become so damp the water was running down the walls and the roof was mouldy green. The new materials had trapped moisture inside the fabric.

Only now, after eight years under a metal canopy, has it dried out.

The trust will explore if it is possible to remove the 1950s coating.