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Founded by 12thC Norman incomers, the De Lestalrics, the church served the parish of their barony which included the village of South Leith. The Leith parishioners worshipped here before acquiring their own South Leith Parish Kirk in 1488. Restalrig lay on the main road between Holyrood Abbey and the lands of North Leith, which David I granted the monks in the Abbey's great charter of 1143. By complete chance, the kirkyard became the unscheduled landing ground for the first-ever British hot-air balloon flight made by James Tytler in 1784.