Its foundation stone was laid in Palmerston Place, on 21 May 1874 by the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, and the building was consecrated on 30 October 1879.

The main spire is 90 metres (295 ft) tall, making the building the tallest in the Edinburgh urban area.

For a time the Episcopal residue of that congregation worshipped in an old woollen mill in Carrubber's Close, near the site of the present Old St Paul's Church.

[4] A bequest by Barbara and Mary Walker left the cathedral's site in Edinburgh's West End to the Episcopal Church alongside an endowment.

The sisters owned the surrounding Drumsheugh Estate and lived in Easter Coates House, which survives to the north of the cathedral.

[5] The cathedral was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and the foundation stone was laid on 21 May 1874 by the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, whose family had been supportive of Scottish episcopacy over the previous hundred years.

Inside the stone was placed a bottle containing a copy of the trust deed, the Edinburgh Post Office Directory, Oliver and Boyd's Almanac, newspapers and coins.

In preparation for the opening of the cathedral a congregation had been formed to worship in a temporary iron church erected on the site now occupied by the Song School.

[8] The critic Sacheverell Sitwell condemned the design as "peerless for ugliness, unless it be for its own sister, Scott's St John's College chapel, at Cambridge".

It was the first cathedral in Great Britain to employ girls in the treble line as well as boys, in 1978, when Dennis Townhill was organist and choir master.

The Song School walls are ornately decorated by the Irish-born artist Phoebe Anna Traquair.

It continues to educate choristers of the cathedral and is now a separate specialist music school open to all pupils.

It is a striking figure of Christ crucified on a background of Flanders poppies and decorated with golden winged angels.

The cathedral is home to a stained-glass window reworked as an artwork in the Modern Art genre for year 2000 by Eduardo Paolozzi who was born in Leith.

A prayer labyrinth designed by artists connected with the cathedral has been carved and sown with wild flowers, with help from others in the congregation of St Mary's.