CCLIV – Leith Walk & Edinburgh Loop

TOWARDS the end of August 2024, I returned to Edinburgh to continue my coastal adventure. The first day of the trip, I intended to do two walks, the first being a stroll up Leith Walk into the centre of Edinburgh, and then an ambling circuit around parts of that city centre. The second was to take me out of the city along the John Muir Way to Prestonpans but, as I looked out at a misty, grey morning, that part was definitely for later. So, Edinburgh in the rain, then…

Port of Leith

Unguided Exploration

When I planned this trip, it had been my intention to do my Edinburgensian exploration in the company of my friend The Wanderer, who lives in that city and was keen to show me around. Unfortunately, events then conspired to prevent this, cutting back the plan to merely meeting for lunch as a break in my solitary saunter through the city.

I would thus be ambling unguidedly, but that was hardly a problem. Edinburgh is a historic city with much to investigate. So much so, in fact, that I was going to have to pick and choose quite ruthlessly, lest it otherwise take me forever.

Tram Stop

I was starting at Port of Leith tram stop, well within Leith’s historic port area and close to the Albert and Alexandra Docks. Moored permanently in the latter, I could see the former lighthouse tender, NLV Fingal – now a floating hotel – and, behind her, the 1892 Port Authority Building.

The development of Leith as the port of Scotland’s capital and a principal centre for foreign trade came about at the start of the First War of Scottish Independence (1296-1328) when Edward I of England seized and sacked South Berwick, requiring a replacement for that port.  South Berwick would later return to Scottish control and be lost again several times before finally becoming English in 1482 as Berwick-upon-Tweed.

By then, Leith had already grown and prospered and had been turned over to Edinburgh’s council from royal control in 1329. The port continued to grow over the centuries, peaking in the early 20th century.  It has since declined and much of it has been redeveloped, though Forth Ports still operates part of it as a commercial port.

Edinburgh Tram

The Edinburgh Trams network might be approximately following the alignment of the dock railway in Ocean Drive but that’s because any line running alongside Albert Dock is going to have to do so in much the same place.

Although disused in 1967, old maps show that the railway sidings physically survived into at least the 1970s, but they were long gone by the time the new tramlines were laid between 2019 and 2023.

South Leith Station

Also long gone is South Leith station, opened simply as ‘Leith’ in 1832 by the Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway (E&DR).

Nicknamed the ‘Innocent Railway’ by Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal on account of its reliance on horses over new-fangled mechanical engines, the E&DR was envisioned as an industrial railway, conveying coal from Dalkeith to Edinburgh and Leith docks, but soon came to cater for passenger services also. 

The E&DR was taken over by the North British Railway (NBR) in 1845, which closed Leith station the following year only to reopen it (as ‘South Leith’) in 1859.  It closed again, for good this time, in 1903 though the South Leith Goods Yard, situated to its east, survived until 1988.

Constitution Street

Myriad Distractions

In passing through what had been the docks’ Constitution Street Entrance (or, in the direction I was going, their exit), I had now passed into Constitution Street, which connects the docks to the foot of Leith Walk.  The road was already laid out in part by 1777 and completed by 1800 and has more than its fair share of impressive or interesting buildings, many of which I spared only a glance for fear of getting no further.

Gallows Scaffold

One structure that I couldn’t be distracted by on account of it having only been temporary when erected in 1823, was the scaffold upon which the last two men executed for piracy in Scotland were hanged.  This was sited at on what were then sands near the north end of Constitution Street not far from the gate in the photo above, not that that had been built then.

The two pirates were a swede, Peter Heaman, and Frenchman, François Gautiez, who had been employed aboard the Gibraltar-registered brig Jane as the master’s mate and cook respectively. Also aboard were captain Thomas Johnston, a Maltese cabin boy named Andrew Cameliar and four seamen.

Jane was bound for Brazil carrying a mixed cargo of oil, paper, beeswax, foodstuffs and, critically, 38,180 Spanish dollars in small canvas bags within large wooden cases. This significant sum (equal to about £8 k Sterling, with a similar purchasing power to £800 k today) proved too much of a temptation…

Piracy & Punishment

First, Heaman beat seaman James Paterson, who was on watch with the pair, to death with a musket and then did the same to the captain. Two loyal members of the crew were imprisoned below while the other two joined the mutineers (as did the cabin boy under duress).

They sailed Jane to Scotland, where they tried to scuttle her but rowed ashore without waiting for her to sink and so she was wrecked on the shore. 

On land, they gave a plausible tale to the authorities which worked right up until Andrew Cameliar escaped and told them the truth. The pair’s two accomplices then turned King’s evidence, escaping the gallows themselves but guaranteeing that Heaman and Guatiez would now both dance the hempen jig.

A Dubious Deterrent

Clearly, in the case of Heaman and Gautiez, hanging failed to act as a deterrent. Much as been argued about whether hanging was ever effective as such and Britain’s last hangman, Albert Pierrepoint (1905-1992) came to believe that it wasn’t after having to execute someone he personally knew.

Far better than not doing awful things because you are afraid of the punishment, is not doing them precisely because they are awful. And on that basis, I can hardly put it better than Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns (1759-1796):

The fear o’ Hell’s a hangman’s whip,
To haud the wretch in order;
But where ye feel your honour grip,
Let that aye be your border

Robert Burns Statue

This statue of Burns was originally erected by Leith Burns Club in 1898 and donated to the burgh; it was sculpted by David Watson Stevenson (1842-1904). Four bronze panels each depict one of his poems (though not the one quoted above), two of which were part of the original installation and two added in 1901.

The statue was slightly repositioned twice before being removed and restored in 2019 while the new tramlines were being laid. It returned to its home at the junction of Constitution Street and Bernard Street in early 2022.

Corn Exchange

The Italianate building behind Burns with a copper-domed cupola is Leith’s former Corn Exchange, built in 1861. It was designed by the prolific partnership of Peddie & Kinnear (1855-1879), comprising architects John Dick Peddie (1824-1891) and Charles Kinnear (1830-1894). A decorative frieze depicting cherubs adorns the Constitution Street frontage; this was sculpted by John Rhind (1828-1892), whose name we shall hear again before the day is out.

The crash of grain prices during the 1873-96 Great Depression of British Agriculture saw its use as a corn exchange dwindle, to be replaced by a new function as a public events venue. It was also used as a drill hall by the Leith Rifle Volunteers, a local reserve battalion amalgamated into the Royal Scots in 1888.  It was converted into studio space in 2005 and has latterly been home to independent computer games developer Build A Rocket Boy Ltd (est. 2016).

Exchange Building

On the far side of the crossroads stood the imposing Exchange Building, built in 1810 but incorporating the older 1785 Assembly Rooms to its rear.  This was designed by English-born architect Thomas Brown (1781-1850), who would be appointed Edinburgh’s Superintendent of the City Works in 1819, overseeing the city’s northern expansion.

The Exchange Building originally functioned as a meeting place for merchants (including corn merchants until 1861), function rooms, coffee house and offices.  Today, it remains only the latter.

St John’s East Church

I acquired a bacon roll from a shop opposite the Exchange Building and, munching it merrily, I strode past The Shore tram stop and onwards along Constitution Street. Ahead, my attention was drawn by an unusual octagonal tower on what was clearly an old church:

This was the former St John’s East Church, built in 1773 as a chapel of ease but raised to the status of a quod sacra parish church – i.e., one whose parish did not match up with a civil parish – in 1834.

When the Disruption of 1843 caused the Free Church of Scotland to split off from the Church of Scotland in a schism, the church became a Free Church. At this time, the tower and attached schoolroom (the extension at front left) were remodelled by architect David Rhind (1808-1883), who had been a pupil of Augustus Charles Pugin (1762-1832) but was no relation to John Rhind the frieze sculptor, except perhaps distantly.

Wee Mack’s Nursery

It reverted to the Church of Scotland when the two churches reunited in 1900, but was closed in 1954 and converted into offices in 1992.  Today it houses Wee Mack’s Nursery, a private pre-school day-care nursery, established in 2020.

Leith Police Station

Next door to Wee Mack’s Nursery was Leith Police Station, fronting onto Queen Charlotte Street, which crossed over Constitution Street. 

The police station occupied the former Leith Town Hall, which was created in its current form in 1868 by James Simpson (1830-1894), who remodelled and incorporated a number of extant buildings to extend an 1828 Town Hall designed by local architectural partnership R&R Dickson.  The latter was a partnership of two brothers – Richard (1792–1857) and Robert (1796-1866) Dickson, whose work we will encounter again later.

Balmerino House

I resisted the urge to detour off Constitution Street in search of the mansion Balmerino House for two reasons, the second and least compelling of which was the detour that it involved. More convincing was that it no longer exists, having been demolished circa 1964 to make way for an 18-storey tower block named Kirkgate House.

Built in 1631 for John Stewart, Earl of Carrick (d. 1645), the house was sold in 1643 to John Elphinstone, 2nd Lord Balmerino (d. 1649).  The earl was the grandson of James V (1512-1542) by his mistress Euphemia Elphinstone (b. 1509), and Lord Balmerino was his second cousin once removed.

In 1649, Lord Balmerino was succeeded by his nephew, John Elphinstone, 2nd Lord Coupar (1632-1704) and the house remained in Elphinstone hands until 1746, when it was confiscated because Arthur Elphinstone, 6th Lord Balmerino (1688-1746) – a committed Jacobite – had been executed for treason.  The house then passed through various hands before becoming a school in 1898.

Pillars House

Concerned that I was making next to no progress, I pushed myself further along Constitution Street, paying next to no attention to Pillars House, which was built as the offices and spirit store of whisky bottlers A&A Crawford (1860-1944), but is now a B&B.

In 1944, A&A Crawford were taken over by the Distillers Company (1877-1986) and the brand was sold to Whyte & Mackay (est. 1844) in 1986. I believe they still produce Crawford’s Three Star blended whisky – A&A Crawford’s only surviving product – though not in great quantity.

South Leith Parish Church

My progress came to a crashing halt when I suddenly found leafy greenness to my right in the form of the churchyard of South Leith Parish Church. It was just too enticing not to step inside its bounds:

Founded as the Catholic Kirk of Our Lady, St Mary in 1487 on the site of a 1430 monastery, the church was initially a chapel of ease attached to St Margaret’s Church at Restalrig, within which parish South Leith remained. 

It was raised to the status of parish church in 1609, and a new steeple added in 1615, just in time for Cromwellian troops to use it as a magazine between 1650 and 1657. The steeple was taken down again in 1836, having begun to show cracks and lean dangerously. An extensive restoration in 1848 by Thomas Hamilton (1784-1858), left the church as it is today.

Queen Victoria Statue

Returning to Constitution Street, I completed its final two hundred metres and revelled that I was victorious!

This statue of Her Late Majesty was sculpted by John Stevenson Rhind (1859-1937), who was the nephew of John Rhind, the sculptor of the Corn Exchange friezes. He was also related to David Watson Stevenson, who sculpted the Robert Burns statue.

The monument was unveiled in 1907 by the former Prime minister, Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, who was then Lord Lieutenant of Midlothian (i.e.,the King’s representative in that county). The bronze panels adorning its pedestal were added in 1913.

Leith Walk

Foot of the Walk

Queen Victoria’s statue stood at a crossroads where Constitution Street met three others, namely Great Junction Street, Duke Street and Leith Walk. She was staring sternly up the latter.

Leith Central Station

At Leith Walk’s bottom left-hand corner from Queen Victoria’s perspective, off the left-hand side of the photo above,  was a parade of shops with a small clock tower atop it. This was all that remained of the original buildings of Leith Central Station, which was opened in 1903 by the NBR and closed by British Railways (BR) in 1952.  Today, most of its frankly excessive footprint is taken up by a branch of Tesco.

Leith Central was always a bit odd. It was massively oversized for the demand, having been built as much as a statement to the rival Caledonian Railway (CR) as anything else.  And it wasn’t really central, being south of South Leith. I mean, technically, it was about halfway between the docks and the boundary of Leith burgh with the City of Edinburgh, but it was well to the south of the actual conurbation.

After it closed, it spent twenty years as a depot stabling diesel multiple units before closing completely in 1972 and becoming a derelict haven for drug-users. It featured as such in Irvine Welsh’s 1993 novel Trainspotting although, by then the site was being redeveloped (the train shed had been demolished in 1989), hence it being a Tesco today.

Manderston Street Bridge

With its origin lying as a defensive rampart constructed between Leith and Calton Hill in 1650, Leith Walk is one of Edinburgh’s longest streets and ascends (or descends) an incline along its length. 

As I plodded slowly up it in the lightly-spitting rain, a tell-tale spot where the roofline of the shopping parades looked revealingly like bridge abutments gave away where the CR’s line had once crossed the road close to Manderston Street.  The bridge had not been at all subtle, being a heavy girder construction. It was erected in 1900 and lasted eight decades, before being dismantled in 1980.

The Manderston Street Bridge was part of a wider network of CR tracks, which in many cases shadowed and duplicated those of the NBR.  While I still think that Dr Richard Beeching was blinkered and failed to see the value of redundancy as contingency, the situation in Edinburgh was one where he might have had a point. In any event, none of the CR network long survived his axe; even its most tenacious parts never made it through the 1980s.

Shrubhill Tram Depot

On my way along Leith Walk, I was passed by many cars and the occasional tram, the latter of which seemed to find no issue with traction in the wet conditions. 

The Walk is no stranger to electric trams, having seen Edinburgh’s first in 1905, operated by Leith Corporation Tramways.  They were taken over by Edinburgh Corporation Tramways in 1920, when the city and burgh merged, and ripped out as obsolete in 1956.

The very last tram of this first generation tramway rolled along Leith Walk before terminating at the 1898 Shrubhill Tram Depot, which had originally housed horse-drawn trams. The depot then became a bus garage, then a museum and then derelict, before finally being converted into luxury flats in 2023.

Leith Tramways Depot

Before long, I came to a building that wasn’t Shrubhill Tram Depot but nonetheless something about it screamed that it was tram-related, possibly just its earnestly 1930s styling. A red plaque on one wall confirmed that these had been the offices (built in 1938) for the Leith Tramways Depot behind it.

  The tram sheds were demolished in 2018 but the office building still stands, overlooking the brand-new second-generation tramlines installed in 2023.

Pilrig Muddle

Between 1833, when Leith split off from Edinburgh to become its own burgh, and 1920, when they reunited, the boundary between the two was situated at the junction of Leith Walk and Pilrig Street.  This had all sorts of ramifications, not least of which was their failure to agree a common tram system. When they ditched horsepower for new-fangled technology, Leith went with electric traction (with a motor in each tram) and Edinburgh went for a cable-hauled system (where one big motor hauls a cable and that pulls the trams). 

The upshot was that you couldn’t catch a single tram from one end of the Walk to another but had to swap over at the Pilrig Street interchange, a situation derided by the tram-riding public with the nickname the Pilrig Muddle.

Winding Wheels

Fortunately, by 1922, when Edinburgh had gained responsibility for both systems, its council realised that Leith’s was the better one and went with electric trams for all, eliminating the Muddle.

A century later, as its successors were digging up Leith Walk to re-lay tramlines that they wished their 1950s forebears hadn’t ripped out, they stumbled upon two discarded winding wheels left over from the cable-haulage system. These now stand at the entrance to nearby Iona Street.

Pilrig St Paul’s Church

Right on the corner of Pilrig Street and Leith Walk stood Pilrig St Paul’s Church and this caught my eye. I had already walked past at least one church without much reaction and would doubtless pass several others during the day, but St Paul’s had an advantage in this fight –  I do love a rose window:

Originally a Free Church, St Paul’s was founded in 1861 and designed by Peddie & Kinnear in a very different style from their Corn Exchange.

Unlike most of the Free Church, it did not unite with the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland to form the United Free Church of Scotland in 1900 but instead remained with the rump of the Free Church that reunited with the Church of Scotland in 1929. Scottish church history is big on its schisms and unions!

Leith Walk Station & Depot

Just south of Pilrig Street was the site of the NBR’s Leith Walk railway station, opened in 1868 and closed in 1930 because the tram journey into central Edinburgh was both quicker cheaper and the London & North-Eastern Railway (LNER), into which the NBR had been grouped in 1923, simply could not compete. 

Its buildings were demolished in the 1970s but the line remained open for limited industrial traffic until 2016.

Almost directly opposite was the NBR’s Leith Walk goods depot, which was its principal Edinburgh goods depot. This was also opened in 1868 but was reduced to a reversing siding when the Granton line was singled in 1969.

The site was occupied by a Royal Mail sorting office in the 1980s and then demolished and redeveloped as mostly housing in 2015. Today, as with Leith Central, a Tesco branch occupies part of the site.

A Leith Walk

As I approached the top end of the Leith Walk, I encountered A Leith Walk, arrayed in front of the terrace called Elm Row.  A Leith Walk is an artwork by sculptor Shona Kinloch, featuring eight large bronze pigeons which provide a stylish and interesting means to trip and break one’s neck.

The pigeons were first installed in 1996 and remained in place for ten years before being removed to accommodate the Edinburgh Trams project. Refurbished and/or recast, they returned triumphantly in 2023.

Five months later, someone tried to steal one, cutting it off at the legs. The thing is, that amount of bronze is really heavy and the would-be thief got nowhere, abandoning their prize.  The stricken bird was rescued by a nearby shopkeeper and repaired and replaced in early 2024.

Dreaming Spires

At the very top of Leith Walk were a pair of quite a different animal, in the form of giraffes Martha & Gilbert.  Fashioned from scrap material by artist Helen Denerley, these were unveiled in 2005 and have proven a popular tourist photo opportunity – people like to be snapped standing beside them.

Martha & Gilbert are their popular nicknames, the artwork is actually titled Dreaming Spires after a poem by Roy Campbell (1901-1957), which is quoted at their feet:

Giraffes! – A People 
Who live between earth and skies, 
Each in his own religious steeple, 
Keeping a lighthouse with his eyes.

Ps & Gs

Adjacent to the top of Leith Walk, at the end of York Place and on the far side of enough busy traffic that I wasn’t willing to get any closer to it, was a structure giving the lie to any notion that octagonal towers are unusual:

The above is St Paul’s and St George’s Church, known colloquially by the more economic epithet Ps & Gs. It belongs to the Scottish Episcopal Church, which is the Scottish branch of the Anglican Communion.

When I saw it, I assumed it must share an architect with St John’s East, but apparently not. It was erected as just St Paul’s Church in 1818 and was designed by Archibald Elliot (1761-1823). It was extended in 1892 by Peddie and Kinnear but the corner turrets were Elliot’s work, he having modelled it on King’s College Chapel in Cambridge.

In 1932, its congregation merged with that of St George’s Church on the opposite side of York Place, the much-altered building of which is now a casino and so likely still hears as many prayers.

Calton Hill

Leith Street

At the top of Leith Walk, I parted company with the tramlines as they took a right-hand fork to pass Ps & Gs and go west along York Place, heading for St Andrew Square. I, meanwhile, took the left hand fork, up the more steeply-climbing Leith Street.

Regent Bridge

Branching off Leith Street to my left was a far steeper and narrower street, which was promisingly labelled Calton Hill (that being where I was headed). I stood at the junction and regarded two other ways onwards that I wasn’t taking. One, Calton Road, descended to pass under Regent Bridge, while Leith Street continued to climb to the Balmoral Hotel.

Regent Bridge crossed a ravine that was formerly called Low Calton but now constitutes Calton Road. It was opened in 1819 and carried Waterloo Place (now the start of the A1), which was built as a magnificent new entrance route into Edinburgh, replacing one that went through narrow, winding streets.  This connected to Princes Street, with the Balmoral overlooking the junction.

Balmoral Hotel

The Balmoral’s desire to assist railway travellers be on time is borne out of its history. It was opened in 1902 as the North British Station Hotel, having been built by the NBR to accommodate passengers from Edinburgh Waverley. It was designed by specialist hotel architect William Hamilton Beattie (1842-1898), who died before its completion.

Subsequent railway developments saw it pass to the LNER in 1923 and BR in 1949 before being sold in 1983 to the Gleneagles Hotel Company. In 1990, they sold it on to Balmoral International Hotels, who promptly renamed it to better reflect their ownership.

It then remained the Balmoral through subsequent acquisition by Forte Group, Granada plc and Rocco Forte Hotels (the latter formed by a disgruntled Sir Rocco Forte after Granada’s hostile 1996 takeover of Forte Group). It has remained in the ownership of Rocco Forte Hotels since 1997.

Caledonian Hotel

In 1903, continuing the previous theme of savage rivalry between the NBR and CR and the resultant duplication of assets, the CR opened their own hotel – the Caledonian Hotel – at the other end of Princes Street to serve their Edinburgh Princes Street terminus (1870-1965).

The Caledonian would also be sold to the Gleneagles Hotel Company in 1983, though its subsequent history involved of a whole string of very different owners. It currently belongs to investment firm Henderson Park Capital (est. 2015).

High Calton

The street named Calton Hill – which had originally been named High Calton – was short, steep, lined with setts. At the top end, it was partly overlooked by stone-fronted 1760s houses, which represented the last remnant of the old Calton village, which was mostly demolished when Waterloo Place and Regent Bridge were constructed.

St Andrew’s House

Ascending Calton Hill led me to the far end of Waterloo Place, where the A1 turned into Regent Road. From there, a flight of steps continued the ascent of the hill. But, before I took to those steps, I paused to examine St Andrew’s House (Taigh Naoimh Anndra). This was the headquarters of the Scottish Government, housing the First Minister’s office.

Designed by modernist architect Thomas Smith Tait (1882-1954), St Andrew’s House was built in 1939 as offices for the Scottish Office and other government departments serving Scotland. It occupied the former site of Calton Jail, which stood there from 1817 until 1930. That had been a very different-looking building, having been designed by Archibald Elliot (the architect of Ps & Gs) with turrets and decorative crenellations.

St Andrew’s House is hardly plain in appearance, having been designed in a monumental art deco style – which I quite like – but I suspect the only part of it that Elliot would recognise as ornamental is the large engraving of the UK Royal Arms (Scottish version) above its entrance.

The arms depicted over the entrance are a full achievement of those borne in right of Scotland since 1837, when Victoria succeeded to the throne.  The shield quarters Scotland’s red lion and tressure on gold (1 and 4) with the three gold lions on red of England (2) and the silver-stringed gold harp on blue of Ireland.

Volcanic Complex

The 103 m high Calton Hill is part of a volcanic complex that formed about 350 million years ago and was subsequently tilted and eroded to create not just Calton Hill but also Arthur’s Seat (251 m) and Castle Rock (128 m). 

Portuguese Cannon

Fortunately, Calton Hill has not spat forth fire and destruction in hundreds of millions of years.

Bearing the late 15th-century arms of Spain, the cannon above was employed in the defence of the Portuguese East Indies, presumably during the 1580-1640 Iberian Union, during which Spain ruled Portugal.

At some point, it came into the possession of the Arakanese kingdom of Mrauk U in modern Myanmar. Mrauk U was conquered by the Third Burmese Empire in 1785, which removed the cannon to its royal capital in Mandalay.

In 1885, the Third Anglo-Burmese War saw the British Empire complete its conquest of Burma, as Myanmar was then known, and the cannon was once again taken as a prize. It was exhibited at the Edinburgh Fair of 1886 before taking up its position on Calton Hill, in which it is annoyingly not quite pointed at the Balmoral’s three-minutes fast clock tower.  If fired, it would take out one side of the tower, most likely causing the remnant to topple over onto Princes Street, delaying railway passengers from getting to their trains.

The 1580 Spanish Royal Arms, as displayed on the cannon, were just a tad complicated as Spain was the premier power of its age and many territories were represented. The field was first divided horizontally, to show the arms pertaining to the House of Habsburg’s Spanish possessions above and those pertaining to Austria below. The Spanish part showed Castile and Leon quartered on one side, and Aragon and Aragonese Sicily divided vertically on the other, with the pomegranate of Granada in the base and the shield of Portugal over all. The Austrian arms quartered Austria (1), Burgundy ancient (2) and modern (3) and Brabant (4), with a shield displaying Flanders and Tyrol over all.

National Monument of Scotland

Behind the Portuguese Cannon stood the National Monument of Scotland, erected in 1829 to commemorate the Scottish soldiers and sailors who died fighting in the Napoleonic Wars (many of them on the Iberian Peninsula, helping liberate Spain from Napoleonic France).  Although when I say ‘erected’, I really mean ‘abandoned due to lack of funds.’ The original design by architects Charles Robert Cockerell (1788-1863) and William Henry Playfair (1790-1857) was considerably more extensive and was modelled on the Parthenon in Athens.

Its part-finished condition led to many mocking nicknames, typically along the lines of ‘Scotland’s Folly’, although proposals to actually complete it have never met with much public enthusiasm.

City Observatory

The City Observatory comprises several buildings; the classical one with the dome was Playfair’s design. Work began on it in 1818 but, like the monument, it ran out of cash and, despite having been designated a Royal Observatory in 1822, following a cynical appeal to the colossal vanity of loyal address to George IV, this Playfair Building wasn’t actually operational until 1831.

The Royal Observatory moved out in 1896 and the City of Edinburgh took the observatory over, first running it directly and then, from 1938, leasing it to the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh (est. 1924). They too moved out in 2009, after vandalism damaged the site beyond use. The City Observatory then mouldered for a while before being renovated and reopened in 2018 as an art centre and restaurant.

Gothic Tower

To the left of that building and behind it in the photo above is the Gothic Tower, part of an earlier observatory project architected by James Craig (1739-1795) for an optician named Thomas Short (d. 1788).

In 1766, having inherited a telescope from his telescope-making brother, James Short (1710-1768), Thomas secured funding to build an observatory to house it.  This was planned to be a complex in the form of a mock fort but, in a reassuringly familiar development, the funding was insufficient and Short ran out of cash. Only one corner tower of the proposed ‘fort’ was constructed, plus a temporary observatory where the Playfair Building now stands.

Various Vistas

You might not be able to gaze at the stars through its telescope any more, but Calton Hill still offers other views, by simple virtue of its elevation.

Nelson Monument

As you can probably infer, the Nelson Monument was erected to commemorate Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) and the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar in which he was victorious even though it killed him.  This was, of course, during those same Napoleonic Wars that the National Monument commemorates but, since Nelson was English, he would be excluded from those commemorated by it.

Completed in 1816 and restored in 2009, the monument occupies the summit of Calton Hill on a site previously occupied by a signalling mast for shipping.  It was designed in part by Robert Burn (1752-1815), who intended it to look like a naval officer’s telescope standing on its end but, since he died before it was finished, it was left to Thomas Bonnar (d. 1847) to see it through to completion.

Atop the tower is a time ball, installed in 1853 to assist ships in calibrating their marine chronometers, which were then vital in determining longitude.  Although no longer necessary, it remains operational and is hoisted daily on its mast just before 1 pm, then dropped on the stroke of the hour.

Dugald Stewart Monument

Due west of the Nelson Monument is a much shorter one, this time commemorating the Edinburgensian philosopher and mathematician Dugald Stewart (1753–1828), a leading light of the Scottish Enlightenment and enthusiastic proponent of the works of economist Adam Smith (1723-1790).

Erected in 1831, his monument is yet another thing on Calton Hill designed by William Playfair, who took inspiration from the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. Lysicrates was a choregos (χορηγός) or wealthy patron of the Theatre of Dionysus and his monument, erected in 334 BC, was the first known use of the Corinthian order to decorate the exterior of a structure.

At approximately the same time as Playfair was feeling inspired by the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, so was Thomas Hamilton, whom we encountered earlier as the restorer of South Leith Parish Church. He had won a competition to design a memorial to the poet Robert Burns, which was erected on Calton Hill’s south-eastern slope in 1828.

Old Royal High School

When I’d had enough of looking at things designed by William Playfair, I descended the steps and returned to Regent Road, which I then followed around the southern flank of Calton Hill. This took me past the neo-classical frontage of the Old Royal High School. This was another of Thomas Hamilton’s works, modelled in part on the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens.

The Royal High School (est. 1128) moved to this site in 1829, commissioning the purpose-built building at a cost of £34,000 (equivalent to about £3.1 million today), mostly paid for by the city. It then remained on the site until 1968, when it moved to larger, but blockily and depressingly post-war, premises elsewhere in Edinburgh.

The building was expected to house a new Scottish Parliament in 1979, but that year’s devolution referendum failed to win enough support.  Twenty years later, when devolution did happen, the Scotland Office decided against using it.  Partly this was because of concerns about its size and security, and partly this was political – Scots Nationalists had something of an attachment to the idea of using it and Scottish Secretary Donald Dewar (1937-2000) was determined not to pander to them. Which I guess is a polite way to say that he refused it out of spite.

Burns Monument

Just past the Old Royal High School, on the opposite side of the road, was Hamilton’s previously-mentioned Burns Monument.  This stands in a small garden planted with flowers mentioned by Burns in poetry and prose.  The poet had an abiding love of nature, as mentioned in a 1789 letter to his friend Frances Dunlop (1730-1815):

‘I have some favourite flowers in Spring, among which are the mountain-daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild brier-rose, the budding birk and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight.’

Absent Statue

Burns isn’t viewing or hanging over the flowers from his monument, though, even in effigy. While the monument was designed to hold a statue of the poet by neoclassical sculptor John Flaxman (1755-1826), that statue – which was actually completed circa 1828 by Flaxman’s pupil and brother-in-law, Thomas Denman (1787-1861), Flaxman having died – was removed  in 1846 to the University of Edinburgh Library, which was then housed in the Old College building.

The statue then moved to the National Gallery of Scotland in 1861 and then again to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery  when that opened in 1889.  This was perhaps a fitting place for it, as the statue was itself based on a portrait painting of Burns by Alexander Naismyth (1758-1840), which had depicted Burns reciting his 1786 flower-related poem To A Mountain Daisy. This sounds appropriately nature-loving and is so after a fashion – it laments the destruction of said daisy under a plough:

Wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem:
To spare thee now is past my pow'r,
Thou bonie gem.

Speaking of people having died, I took a right-hand turn after the Burns Memorial and descended further down Calton Hill through the New Calton Burial Ground.

New Calton Burial Ground

This cemetery was laid out in 1817 but contains some older burials, which were moved from Old Calton Burial Ground when Regent Road and Waterloo Place were constructed by cutting through part of Calton Hill, destroying part of that cemetery. The engineer in charge of that project was  Archibald Elliot (who also built the adjoining Calton Jail) and when he died in 1823, he was interred in the new cemetery, which seems apt.

Also buried within New Calton Burial Ground were three members of the lighthouse-building Stevenson family, whose work I have encountered so frequently around the Scottish coast. These were Robert (1772-1850), Thomas (1818-1887) and Alan (1807-1865) Stevenson who, in addition to being accomplished lighthouse engineers, were also grandfather, father and uncle respectively to novelist Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894).

I could have spent far too long ambling about the cemetery looking for their graves but I knew I needed to press on. I thus took note of the general funereal ambience and made my way through it, down the hillside, heading for the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

The Royal Mile

Palace of Holyroodhouse

I exited the cemetery onto Calton Road, which in turn led me to a junction with a mini-roundabout. One short spur off this – Abbey Strand – led directly to the palace gates.

The Palace of Holyroodhouse, also known by the marginally shorter name Holyrood Palace, is the King’s official residence in Scotland and anchors one end of the so-called Royal Mile. It stands beside the ruin of Holyrood Abbey, an Augustinian abbey founded in 1128 by David I, which played host to the Parliament of Scotland repeatedly in mediaeval times.

The palace was constructed  in 1505 for James IV (1473-1513), extended between 1528 and 1536 by James V and substantially rebuilt by Charles II (1630-1685) in the 1670s. The latter’s brother and successor James VII (1633-1701) refurbished the abbey in 1687 as the private chapel of his new order of chivalry, the Order of the Thistle. This merely prompted an anti-Catholic mob to ransack it during the following year’s Glorious Revolution and, thereafter, the abbey fell into ruin.

The Royal Arms of Scotland as used by Jameses IV and V were fairly simple and striking, depicting a red lion rampant within a tressure decorated with fleurs-de-lys. Those of Guise were more complicated, showing its origin as a cadet branch of the House of Lorraine. Its quarters displayed Hungary & Angevin Sicily (1), Jerusalem & Aragon (2), Anjou (3) and Bar (4), with the shield of Lorraine over all plus a red label to indicate the house’s cadet status as descendants of a younger son of René II, Duke of Lorraine (1451-1508).

Scottish Parliament

More or less opposite Holyrood, facing onto a street named Horse Wynd, was the Scottish Parliament Building. This opened in 2004 on a site previously occupied by a brewery belonging to Scottish & Newcastle (1749-2008). It was designed by Catalan architect Enric Miralles Moya (1955-2000), who won the commission through an international design competition. His design was intended to represent the Scottish national identity.

Public reaction the building was mixed to say the least. While his submission had been the most popular of those received, it was far from being to everybody’s taste. The satirical magazine Private Eye even awarded it its 2004 Sir Hugh Casson Award for the worst new building of the year, describing it as a ‘confused and confusing mish-mash of upturned boats and leaflike forms.’

By contrast, Miralles’s fellow architects absolutely loved it and the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded it their prestigious Stirling Prize in 2005, praising it as ‘a statement of sparkling excellence.’  This reminds me very much of my student days when I shared a house with two architecture students and one of them was regularly dismayed by his lecturers’ utter disparagement of his attempts to design buildings that he thought people would like, rather than ‘daring’ artistic statements that might win industry prizes.

I guess the ultimate test of the building is really whether it works or not for its intended purpose as a legislative chamber, and it seems to, so fair enough.

Canongate

Turning away from the Scottish Parliament, I headed west from the mini-roundabout up the street known as Canongate, which forms the eastern end of the Royal Mile.  Between 1143 and 1856 this also gave its name to a separate burgh from the city of Edinburgh, which was initially under the control of the canons of Holyrood Abbey, hence the first part of the name. The ‘gate’ suffix just means ‘way’ or ‘street’.

I was surprised and delighted to discover heraldic banners hanging from various buildings all the way up Canongate.  This seasonal decoration has apparently come out for the tourists for several years now and this particular tourist very much appreciated the gesture. 

Robert Fergusson Statue

I had not quite gone a quarter of a mile up Canongate  when I almost collided with someone coming the other way, namely the late poet Robert Fergusson (1750-1774), or at least a 2004 statue of him, sculpted by David Annand. Robert was clearly on his way down to Holyrood for an all-day bout of musing on account of the inclement weather:

Or should some canker’d biting shower
The day and a’ her sweets deflower,
To Holyrood-house let me stray,
And gie to musing a’ the day.

Not paying due attention to where he was going would ultimately be Robert’s undoing for he fell down some steps in 1774, resulting in a head injury that brought on a fatal decline.  Because of his untimely death, he only enjoyed three years of poetic creativity, but in that time his output was prolific. This included a 368-line long poem about Edinburgh titled Auld Reikie (quoted above), which was published as ‘Canto I’ implying an intention to write considerably more of it. 

In addition to having volume, his works – many of which were in the Scots dialect – were highly influential. Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Robert Garioch (1909-1981) all cited him as an inspiration. Burns even paid for his gravestone!

Canongate Kirk

Robert Fergusson is buried within the churchyard of Canongate Kirk, outside the gate of which his statue strides. 

The building of this church was begun in 1688 on the orders of James VII, funded by a 1649 bequest to the Crown from wealthy merchant Thomas Moodie of Sachtenhall. James needed a new parish church for Canongate, so that he could reserve the abbey for the Order of the Thistle. As fate would have it, the kirk was not completed until 1690, two years after the Glorious Revolution, and its frontage would bear the Royal Arms as used by his rival and usurper, William of Orange (1650-1702). Well, sort of.

As parish church for Canongate, the kirk’s parish includes the Palace of Holyroodhouse and also, as an exclave, Edinburgh Castle. This meant that the late Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022) used to drop in for services when in Edinburgh. It also hosted a minor Royal wedding in 2011 when her granddaughter Zara Phillips (currently 21st in line to the throne) married England rugby captain Mike Tindall.

Canongate Kirkyard

Much as I love a bit of pomp and circumstance, that last part didn’t particularly interest me. I was far more interested in the contents of the churchyard and two people in particular, interred within its bounds . These were the economist Adam Smith, who founded the study of political economics and developed the concept of division of labour, and his classically-commemorated fanboy Dugald Stewart.  Not that I actually sought their graves out, you understand. No, to do that with appropriate recognition and respect, I’d have had to employ someone else to do that part for me. Division of labour, do you see?

Canongate Mercat Cross

What I did seek out within the churchyard was Canongate’s mediaeval mercat cross, which was moved there in 1888 from a position near the tolbooth, about 50 m further along the road.

The old arms of Canongate Burgh featured a stag’s head with a cross between its antlers, in reference to a tale that David I fell off his horse while hunting and was about to be gored by his quarry (a stag) when he saw a Holy Cross appear between its antlers. As he reached out for it, the stag stopped, turned and fled and this miracle then prompted David to found Holyrood Abbey. The arms of the kirk are very similar but with a field division per chevron embattled. I couldn’t find an authoritative explanation of this difference, but I expect that the chevron is a reference to Thomas Moodie and the battlements one to the castle.

Canongate Tolbooth

I emerged from the churchyard back onto Canongate and made it another 50 m westwards before stopping to look at Canongate Tolbooth. This was built in 1591 and served as the burgh’s court and council house until union with Edinburgh in 1856.  Today, it is a museum.

High Street

The time on the Tolbooth clock was telling me to get a move on, but just about every building and alleyway seemed to have a little plaque on it or some other point of interest as I continued west.  Getting a grip on myself, I resolved not to dawdle but instead to pick and choose what else I stopped for.

As I strolled along, generally enjoying the ambience and actually making some progress, Canongate came to an end and I crossed over a busy crossroads to enter Edinburgh’s High Street.

Netherbow Wellhead

Just under a quarter mile west of the tolbooth, I encountered a blocky, rectangular structure that turned out to be an old wellhead from the days when households had to fetch water from a communal street well or pump. The Netherbow Wellhead is the oldest of several cisterns that provided water from Comiston Springs, three miles away. It was built by Robert Mylne (1633-1710) circa 1675 and restored in 1997.

As I continued up the Royal Mile, I would pass others, which I may as well just mention now. The High Street Wellhead was rebuilt in 1897 after an accident involving a horse-drawn fire engine, while the Lawnmarket wellhead was built in 1835, replacing one that was removed during Thomas Hamilton’s construction of George IV Bridge (an elevated street connecting to the western end of the Royal Mile).

Apparently there were fourteen such cisterns in central Edinburgh in their heyday, and they could neither keep up with the quantity nor quality of water demanded by the citizens. Supplying the water via lead pipes can hardly have helped keep the customers happy and compliant.

There is a fourth surviving well – the West-bow Well – in Grassmarket, just south of Castlehill. But I never went there, so I didn’t take a photo of it.

North & South Bridges

Continuing up the High Street brought me to a crossroads with two bridges that didn’t look all that much like bridges, North Bridge and South Bridge.  The former was completed in 1897, replacing a 1772 predecessor, and links Edinburgh’s Old Town, which I was now in the heart of, with the New Town (Princes Street etc.) by spanning the steep, narrow valley in which Edinburgh Waverley sits.  South Bridge, meanwhile is a 19-arch viaduct opened in 1788, though only one arch is visible on account of surrounding construction.  It acts as an extension to North Bridge, spanning another valley bottom, along which the street Cowgate runs.

On visits to Edinburgh prior to 2021, their junction with the High Street had been a bit of a nightmare due to heavy motor traffic on the one route, and thronging pedestrians on the other.  Things were a lot easier this time due to refurbishment work on the North Bridge overrunning thanks to covid and more extensive damage than expected. The works have closed one lane and rerouted northbound traffic elsewhere, halving the scope for conflict. 

Thus, I lightly hopped across without issue, leaving the last of the banners behind.

Tron Kirk

Immediately across the junction was the striking structure of the Tron Kirk. This was opened in 1641 because Charles I (1600-1649) wanted to kick worshippers out of St Giles, which had been raised in status from parish church to cathedral. (One starts to see where his younger son, James VII, got his ideas about Holyrood abbey.)

The Tron Kirk is named for a weighing beam used by a nearby market until circa 1800, that being a tron in Scots. The church was designed by John Mylne (1611-1667), uncle to the wellhead-building Robert, but has since been altered, having been narrowed by the South Bridge works in 1785 and damaged by the 1824 Great Fire of Edinburgh. Its current spire is the product of post-ignem rebuilding in 1828 and was designed by R&R Dickson.

The Tron Kirk ceased to be a church in 1952 and sat empty for a while. It is currently occupied by a retail outlet for Scottish Design Exchange, a vehicle for local artists and designers. Not that I went inside; the only significance the Tron Kirk had for me was as a waymark.

Adam Smith Statue

I passed. To be more specific, I passed both the Tron Kirk and the High Street Wellhead, only to find a great figure staring down at me sternly in silent disapproval of my doing both walk and navigation without outsourcing one of those tasks to another.  It was the late Adam Smith.

Edinburgh Mercat Cross

Adam Smith was still looking unimpressed, so I decided to show him how free-market my economy was by breaking free of his terrible gaze and rushing past him to the market cross behind him.  Unlike Canongate’s – or, actually, according to old reports, exactly like Canongate’s before that one got moved to the churchyard – Edinburgh Mercat Cross had ambitions to grow up to be a castle.  It had grown itself a pedestal with a parapet like some sort of newly-spawned keep.

Actually, although references to Edinburgh Mercat Cross go back to 1365, this particular incarnation is of Victorian provenance, as can be deduced from the various coats of arms that surround it.

On top of the cross, shyly ducking out of my photo, was a carving of a unicorn, because unicorns are well-known to naturally nest at the top of tall poles. It’s just what they do.  This particular unicorn was designed by John Rhind, the sculptor who made the frieze on Leith Corn Exchange. 

Parapet Proclamations

The parapet beneath the unicorn is extremely handy for catching anything it might drop by accident – it has hooves instead of hands, after all – but it is also used by officials to announce proclamations. Admittedly, this neither a common, nor efficient means of disseminating information but tradition still demands it in some cases, which is why Lord Lyon, King of Arms was up there announcing the succession of Charles III in 2022 and, earlier this year, the dissolution of the UK Parliament prior to a General Election.

James Braidwood Statue

Standing off to one side in case any proclamation rhetoric got too fiery, or the unicorn mischievously decided to start playing with matches, was a statue of James Braidwood (1800-1861).  Now, there’s a good chance that you’ve never heard of Braidwood, and you’d hope to never need his expertise, but he was the chap who essentially invented modern fire-fighting.

With terrible timing, Braidwood was appointed head of the world’s first municipal fire brigade – in the sense of being a public-funded, full-time professional civilian force as opposed to soldiers, unpaid volunteers or a commercial service – two months before the 1824 Great Fire tore through Edinburgh and proved contemporary fire-fighting techniques to be entirely inadequate.

Braidwood took this defeat by fickle flame rather personally and, carefully considering how fires developed, introduced the radical idea of getting inside the burning building and fighting the fire tactically, rather than just playing hoses on it from outside. He trained his men to keep low, below the toxic smoke, and equipped them with neck-guarding helmets and thick protective jackets. It’s not an exaggeration to say that he invented modern firemen.

Edinburgh City Chambers

James Braidwood’s employer was the City of Edinburgh, whose headquarters – Edinburgh City Chambers – was keeping a careful eye on him from the opposite side of Parliament Square (as the High Street had become), just in case he invented anything else of enormous public usefulness.

The City Chambers weren’t actually built as such. Instead, like many grand buildings in Edinburgh, it was built as an exchange – in this case, the Royal Exchange – for the benefit of wealthy merchants and traders and taken over by the authorities later.  The architect was John Adam (1721-1792), one of the three Adam Brothers, who built quite a lot of Scottish buildings but also the Adelphi in London.

The ungrateful merchants shunned it when it opened in 1760, continuing to meet at the mercat cross, so the council moved into part of it in 1811 and bought the whole thing in 1893. It has remained the official home of the city’s government ever since, through various different iterations of local government.

St Giles’ Cathedral

Visible in the background of the mercat cross photo is St Giles’ Cathedral, which I now found myself walking past. This was built in the 14th century as the parish church for Edinburgh, on the site of an older, 12th-century church.  It was then extended on several occasions.

In 1559 it became Protestant under John Knox (c.1514-1572) – a prominent leader of the Scottish Reformation – who established the Church of Scotland in 1560 as a Presbyterian church (i.e. run by elders, but no bishops). However,  James VI (1566-1625) successfully reintroduced Episcopalianism and his son, Charles I, decided to split off Edinburgh from the Diocese of St Andrews, and raise St Giles’ from parish church to cathedral. This lasted a whole five years before, amid ongoing religious strife, the Church of Scotland abolished bishops again and went back to being Presbyterian. But only until the Restoration, when Charles II brought the bishops back again.  As before, it was brief, with the church returning to Presbyterianism for good in 1689. Bishop Alexander Rose (1647-1720), who had only been appointed two years earlier, quit the church in a mini-schism to set up his own Episcopalian congregation in a former wool store, thus founding the separate, Anglican, Scottish Episcopal Church.

Today, the Bishop of Edinburgh has his throne in St Mary’s Cathedral and St Giles’ technically isn’t a cathedral as the Church of Scotland, which owns it, doesn’t have bishops. It ought to just be a ‘High Kirk’ and some do call it that, but in general parlance the ‘cathedral’ name stuck, even if the reason for it didn’t.

Duke of Buccleuch Statue

On the far side of St Giles’ Cathedral, another impressive statue waited. Slightly too impressive in fact, as the sculptor, Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm (1834-1890) made it too large for its pedestal. As a result, his toes peek out over the edge, making it look as though the statue’s subject is contemplating stepping forward and throwing himself off!

The man commemorated by this statue was Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch and 7th Duke of Queensberry (1806-1884), who is likely someone else you’ve never heard of. He was a prominent landowner and politician in his day, but the main reason he has a statue in the heart of Edinburgh, is that it was he who built Granton Harbour. Well, not him literally, he was a duke; he employed others to do stuff for him (Adam Smith should be pleased).

As you can tell from the photo, the memorial was decorated with various coats of arms, and I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t want to find out whose they were.  The duke’s own arms are on a bronze panel, surrounded by the ribbon of the Order of the Garter, while six rampant buck statuettes – sculpted by David Watson Stevenson (who made the Burns statue in Leith) and his younger brother, William Grant Stevenson (1849-1919) – show the arms of his wife and his female ancestors:

• Lady Henrietta Hyde, daughter of the Earl of Rochester. (She was the duke’s 3 × great-grandmother)
• Lady Jane Douglas, eldest daughter of the Duke of Queensberry (2 × great-grandmother)
• Lady Caroline Campbell, eldest daughter and co-heiress of the Duke of Argyll (great-grandmother)
• Lady Elizabeth Montagu, daughter of the Duke of Montagu (grandmother)
• the Hon. Harriet Townshend, daughter of Viscount Sydney (mother)
• Lady Charlotte Anne Thynne, daughter of the Marquis of Bath (his widow)

David Hume Statue

Looking far more relaxed than the ready-to-jump Duke of Buccleuch was the nearby statue of the philosopher, historian and economist David Hume (1711 – 1776), depicting him in the style of an Ancient Greek philosopher. While much of this statue was covered in a green oxidised patina, his toes were extremely shiny. This is because people keep rubbing them for luck.

The shiny toe – students about to sit exams and the accused heading to court both rub it for luck, apparently – tells us quite a lot about superstition. Firstly, that it develops quite quickly, as the statue was only installed in 1997 and the practice has become quite entrenched in that quarter-century. And secondly, that it is not only irrational but that it takes no account of appropriateness.

Hume strongly rejected superstition which, he said ‘rouses the vain fears of unhappy mortals’ and he would likely be appalled at this abuse of his statue, which shows such contempt for his work.  But then, in his own words:

‘The avidum genus auricularum, the gazing populace, receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition, and promotes wonder.’

He is proven right by his statue’s shiny toe, but in the most disrespecting way.

George IV Bridge

Having not rubbed Hume’s toe,  which meant that I would be denied good luck (according to the toe-rubbers), or that I just wasn’t deluded (according to Hume), I reached the end of the High Street, where it met George IV Bridge and Lawnmarket.

As mentioned earlier, George IV Bridge is an elevated street, similar to South Bridge. Opened in 1836 and designed by Thomas Hamilton, it connects the Old Town to Edinburgh’s South Side, bridging Cowgate on the way.

To take it would have meant turning left, but my way onwards was still forwards, as the Royal Mile became Lawnmarket. 

The Hub

Lawnmarket led me to another junction, over which loomed the 72 m gothic spire of the former Tolbooth Kirk, now an arts and events  venue called The Hub. This singular sticky-up spike can be seen as landmark from vantage points all over Edinburgh.

Built in 1844 as a meeting hall for the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the kirk was designed by James Gillespie Graham (1776–1855) and Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-1852). The latter, the son of Augustus Charles Pugin, is most famous for his work on the Palace of Westminster in London.

It ceased to be used in 1979 and sat empty for two decades before finding its current function in 1999.

Castle Esplanade

From the Tolbooth Kirk, the Royal Mile concluded its final hundred metres or so as Castlehill, where it came to the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle. This was overshadowed by the seating erected for the 2024 Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, which had finished a couple of days earlier, and was also on the far side of a barrier, entrance to castle being ticketed. 

Touring the castle was not something I’d planned timed for as part of my day’s walk, so I snapped a photo past the heads of the endless stream of visitors and then diverted left, down a flight of stairs called Castle Wynd North, to arrive on Johnston Terrace. I then followed this around to Castle Terrace and Lothian Road, essentially looping around the castle’s western side on a route back to Princes Street.

Edinburgh Castle

There has been a castle on Castle Rock since the time of Malcolm III (c. 1031-1093) and it functioned as the chief royal residence before the palace of Holyroodhouse was constructed, after which it functioned more as an arsenal and fort.  Today it is primarily a tourist attraction, although it retains a garrison for largely ceremonial purposes.

As one might expect of a castle in the capital, it has seen a lot of action. It was occupied by the English from 1174 to 1186, following William the Lion’s failed bid to seize Northumbria, and was repeatedly captured and recaptured during the Wars of Scottish Independence, after which it was extensively rebuilt. 

In the civil war, it was captured twice by the Presbyterian Covenanters (in 1639 and 1640) and seized by Oliver Cromwell in 1650.

Princes Street Gardens

St John’s & Dean Ramsay Memorial

At the western end of Princes Street, facing across Lothian Road toward the Caledonian Hotel opposite, was St John’s Church, this being another possession of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Architected by William Burn (1789-1870) – the son of Robert Burn, who designed the Nelson Monument – it was erected in 1818. Extensions were added in 1882 and 1935.  The building is known for its vaulted ceiling and also its stained glass windows, though the latter were an afterthought, added between 1857 and 1935.

In the grounds of the church stands the Dean Ramsey Memorial, a granite cross erected in 1879 to commemorate Edward Ramsay (1793-1872), minister of this church and dean of the Diocese of Edinburgh. He was a popular and influential figure within the Scottish Episcopal Church and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, hence the church’s desire to erect a memorial to him.

The cross was designed by Robert Rowand Anderson, the architect who designed the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

The Nor’ Loch

The church and cross stood at the north-western corner of Princes Street Gardens, a public park the existence of which is closely tied to the development of the New Town.  From 1460, when James III (1452-1488) ordered that the Tummel Burn be dammed, until 1820, what is now the site of the gardens formed an artificial lake, the Nor’ Loch.

This became quite polluted over the centuries of its existence, and proved an annoying obstacle to Edinburgh’s expansion northwards, although it was handy for drowning convicted criminals, before that method of execution was banned in 1685.

The eastern end of the Nor’ Loch was drained in 1764, to allow the development of the New Town (which commenced in 1766) and the construction of the first North Bridge to connect to it.  The western end became canalised with straight sides for a while, but was finally drained completely between 1813 and 1820. This enabled the creation of the gardens, an idea very popular with wealthy homeowners overlooking it.

Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway

Proposals to run a railway through it horrified those homeowners, who fought the idea and forced the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway (E&GR) to terminate its line at Haymarket when it opened in 1842.

Two years later, after much negotiation, the E&GR was allowed to run its line into the NBR station at North Bridge (now Edinburgh Waverley), so long as it did so concealed within a cutting, so that no one had to look at it.

The E&BR was absorbed by the NBR in 1865, but its line remains in its cutting today and, as was agreed, when you’re in Princes Street Gardens, you barely know that it’s there.

Statues and Monuments

Since I had a leafy park on hand that was neither a busy street, nor an unpleasantly-polluted lake, it seemed rude not to divert into it.  The park is dotted with various memorials and statues, some of which I spared only a glance and others of which I took more notice.

• The Royal Scots Greys monument depicts a Royal Scots Dragoon Guard and was sculpted by William Birnie Rhind (1853 – 1933), who was the son of John Rhind. It was unveiled by the Earl of Rosebery on the 16th November 1906 and plaques pertaining to WW1 and WW2 were added later.
• Wojtek the Soldier Bear commemorates a bear named Wojtek. I mean, obviously. Orphaned by hunters Wojtek was sold as cub to Polish soldiers in Iran in 1942. They trained him to carry ammunition and ‘enlisted’ him with a name, rank and number, so that they could take him on deployment, which they did. At the end of WW2, the soldiers were billeted in the Scottish Borders and donated him to Edinburgh Zoo when they were demobilised. Wojtek died in 1963. This memorial to him by Alan Beattie Heriot was unveiled in 2015.
• The Forget-Me-Not Elephant is a work by Andy Scott, whose work I have previously encountered. Depicting an elephant patterned with forget-me-nots because ‘elephants never forget,’ this 2019 artwork commemorates the 2012 Mortonhall baby ashes scandal. This involved staff at Mortonhall Crematorium telling the grieving parents of dead infants that their children’s ashes were not recoverable for burial. This had been true in the 1960s, but Mortonhall’s procedures had never been updated to reflect subsequent technological improvements. The ashes were then secretly buried by staff in its garden.
• The Genius of Architecture is an 1891 work by sculptor William Brodie (1815-1881). For reasons best known to the artist, Architecture is a crowned woman while its Science and Practice are both small boys in kilts. The boy standing is Science, with a plan in his hand, while Practice kneels to join blocks of stone with a trowel.

The Galleries

Separating the gardens into two was a road called the Mound,  created circa 1830 using earth excavated from the foundations of the buildings constructed in the New Town. Situated right next to this road were two neoclassical buildings, both of which housed art galleries. These are widely assumed by many to both belong to the same organisation, but actually they are separate, though related.

The one closest to Princes Street was the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA). This formed in 1826, which formed as a splinter group from the Royal Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland (RI) which itself existed between 1819 and 1830. In 1911, it moved into its current premises – which had been the RI’s old building – which had been built in 1826 to a design by William Playfair.

The other is the Scottish National Gallery (‘the National’), which possessed the Flaxman statue of Burns for a while. This was established by the RSA in 1859 in its current building, also by William Playfair. Both the RSA and the National shared the building, each having one half, until the RSA eventually acquired their neighbour.

Scott Monument

Imposing as the galleries might be, by far and away the most striking thing at the eastern end of the gardens is the Scott Monument.

This gothic spire commemorates the prolific author Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), who churned out seemingly countless historical romances including Rob Roy (1817), Ivanhoe (1819) and Waverley (1814), the latter of which lent its name to the neighbouring railway station in 1854.  ‘The Waverly novels’ would also come to be the general name by which his main series of works became known.

The monument was designed by George Meikle Kemp (1795-1844), who entered the design competition under a pseudonym as he feared that his self-taught status would otherwise disqualify him. His tower is 61 m high and is adorned with statues of characters from Scott’s novels. A 287-step spiral staircase leads up inside to viewing platforms.

Black & Livingstone Statues

Flanking the monument at a discreet distance are two statues, both facing onto Princes Street.

To the west of the monument stands Adam Black (1784-1874) by John Hutchison (1833-1910). In addition to being Lord Provost of Edinburgh twice, Black founded a publishing company in 1807, and invited his nephew Charles Black (1807-1854) to join him in running it in 1834, creating the publishing house A&C Black.  Amongst its various works, this made two important acquisitions in the form of the copyrights for the Encyclopædia Britannica, of which they published three editions, and the Waverley novels. The company still exists, as subsidiary of Bloomsbury Publishing (est. 1986).

To the east of the monument stands the missionary David Livingstone (1813-1873), sculpted by Amelia Paton Hill, (1820 – 1904).

Livingstone explored East Africa, becoming the first European to see the Victoria Falls in 1855 and Lake Bangweulu in 1868. The following year, since no one outside Africa had heard from him in years, the New York Herald hired Henry Mortin Stanley (1841-1904) to go and find him. This, he achieved in 1871, encountering Livingstone in Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika and, according to his later accounts – but the relevant page was torn from his actual diary – greeted him with the words ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’

New Town

George Street

By now, it was time  for my own solitary wanderings to experience a lunchtime hiatus. Unlike Livingstone, I had modern technology at my fingertips so the Wanderer did not need to mount an expedition to find me. We agreed a rendezvous point in George Street, in the New Town, and I set off in that direction.

Named for George III, George Street was laid out as the central thoroughfare of the New Town by James Craig.  In Georgian times, it was residential, but had become shops by Victoria’s reign and remains mostly so today.  Many of the premises were restaurants and coffee shops, so it made a good choice for our rendezvous.

William Pitt Statue

I passed over the crossroads of George Street and Frederick Street, which was watched over by a statue of William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806), who was prime minster from 1783 to 1801 and then again from 1804 until his death.  This statue, erected in 1831, is a copy of the statue by Francis Leggatt Chantrey (1781-1841) that stands in London’s Hanover Square.

In 2021, the Edinburgh copy was considered for removal by a council panel seeking to address the city’s historic involvement with slavery. Pitt was opposed to slavery – although it was his successor who passed the Slave Trade Act 1807 – and derided it as ‘the curse of mankind.’  As his statue is still there, I guess that earned him a reprieve.

Northern Lighthouse Board

A little further along George Street was an otherwise unremarkable-looking house with a model of a lighthouse attached to the front of it as a sign.  This was the headquarters of the Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB), the general lighthouse authority for Scotland and the Isle of Man. This is the body that kept the Stevenson family busy, designing almost all the Scottish lighthouses that I have passed upon my travels.

One particular quirk of the NLB is that, in addition to its own blue ensign to fly on NLB vessels – which bear the ship prefix ‘NLV’ for ‘Northern Lights Vessel’ – it also has a Commissioners Flag to represent the Commissioners for Northern Lights who run it. This latter flag is patterned like a white ensign but with the 1606-pattern Union Jack in the canton – the only British flag still in use that failed to update in 1801.

I knew that the NLB often flies this strange flag from the frontage of its HQ and I was hoping to see it but, alas, no flags were flying at all. I guess none of the commissioners were in the building at the time.

Freemasons’ Hall

Seven doors along from the NLB was a building that made itself even less obvious, with only a statue of St Andrew above the door and a restrained name sign within the porch to give it away. Oh, and the pillars. Once you knew what it was, the pillars on the frontage seemed very apt. 

This was Freemasons’ Hall, headquarters of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, the governing body of freemasonry in Scotland, which was founded in 1736.

The Grand Lodge’s arms impale the saltire of St Andrew, representing Scotland, with arms depicting a gold chevron and three ‘proper’ (i.e., naturally-coloured) towers on a green field. A pair of compasses, which are significant in freemasonry, are placed on the chevron in black.

The Wanderer

I met the Wanderer at the appointed place with almost perfect timing, she having got there just moments beforehand. This was apparently just long enough to change her mind about eating there and she led me further down George Street, with somewhere else now in mind.

Charlotte Square

At the end of George Street was Charlotte Square, a green space surrounded by buildings designed largely by the middle of the three Adam Brothers, Robert Adam (1728-1792), in the year before he died. A memorial to Prince Albert (1819-1861) stands in the centre, incorporating the work of several artists, while the National Records of Scotland’s West Register House dominates the western side.

At No. 6, On the north side of Charlotte Square is Bute House, the official residence of the Scottish First Minister (whose office at St Andrew House, I’d passed earlier). The rest of the houses, which were always intended to be prestigious addresses, certainly have an impressive list of former residents such as Joseph Lister (1827-1912), the pioneer of antiseptic surgery, and WW1 general Douglas Haig (1861-1928) to name just two.

The square also has links to suffragism, the successful early 20th-century movement to secure women the right to vote. Scottish suffragists (who campaigned by legal means, as opposed to suffragettes, who staged disruptive events) set off from Charlotte Square on a march to London in 1912. Also, Elsie Inglis (1864-1917), a doctor, surgeon, teacher and suffragist, was taught at the private Institution for Educating Young Ladies which could then be found at No. 23. Alas, she died before women’s suffrage could become reality with the passing of the Representation of the People Act 1918.

Leisurely Lunch

We found lunch in a backstreet at the western end of the New Town and spent well over a leisurely hour enjoying it. Eventually though, despite the Wanderer’s tempting suggestion that we follow it up by going elsewhere for ice cream, I knew I had to get going, if I was to complete any more of the day’s plans. Who knew that I could say ‘no’ to ice cream? It certainly shocked me! But the truth was, had I stopped for any longer, I’d simply have quit for the day.

After lunch, we returned to Princes Street, there to part company.

Holyrood Park

Queen’s Drive

Having consumed a ton of calories over lunchtime, I was now ready to walk them all off again, which I aimed to do by ascending Arthur’s Seat. Or, as Robert Fergusson put it:

Let me to Arthur’s Seat pursue, 
Where bonnie pastures meet the view,
And mony a wild-lorn scene accrues, 
Befitting Willie Shakspeare’s muse.

Well, quite.

The Wanderer had advised me what route she thought I should take to get there, and this involved going east along Princes Street, crossing North Bridge and then retracing my steps back down Canongate to the Scottish Parliament. So, that’s what I did.  This time, however, I kept going past the parliament building, until I reached Queen’s Drive, a road that encloses much of Holyrood Park.

Radical Road

A sign and some fencing warned me that the Radical Road, a path that runs for three-quarters of a mile under Salisbury Crags towards the top of Arthur’s Seat, was closed due to ‘high risk of rockfall’. This has been the case since 2018 and remains so indefinitely as Historic Environment Scotland has determined that permanent closure is the cheapest option for dealing with it. This has attracted quite a lot of criticism and not just from predictable parties such as Ramblers Scotland but also by a whole bunch of health and safety experts because the decision appears to be based more on financial concerns than on safety ones.

Luckily for me, that’s not the way I was going.  I mean, obviously I wasn’t, it was all fenced off. But it was not the way I’d been meaning to go, anyway.

St Margaret’s Well

The route that I was taking, started off by passing St Margaret’s Well, which sort of was and wasn’t what it says.

The physical form of the 15th-century wellhouse was originally in Restalrig but was moved in 1860 because otherwise the NBR’s railway-building was going to obliterate it.  It was then sited over the Well of the Holy Rood, which already existed in the park.

St Anthony’s Chapel

The path then climbed beneath St Anthony’s Chapel, which was a surprisingly mysterious structure, with very little known about it for sure. 

It was associated with Holyrood Abbey and was in existence by 1426, when Pope Martin V (1369-1431) supplied funds for its repair. It then fell out of use during the Reformation and today it lies in ruins. Its tower, once three storeys high, is now a stub open on two sides.

I didn’t bother diverting to look at the ruins, but I did pause beside them to look down to St Margaret’s Loch. This is an artificial loch, created in 1856 at the instigation of Prince Albert as part of an improvement plan to drain surrounding marshy areas.

Long Row

From St Anthony’s Chapel, the path continued to rise atop the Long Row, a line of basalt cliffs that once comprised a lava flow.  It wasn’t dramatically steep but, for about 500 m, it was relentless. I suspect I may be out of practice at hills, because I needed to pause for breath at the top, before beginning the final ascent to the summit.

Arthur’s Seat

When I’d recovered the ability to breathe, I completed my ascent to the top. Although, I paused again, just shy of the full 251 m, because from some angles, the path looked more precarious than it actually was and I needed to psych myself up for it.

A woman lurking nearby turned out to have an even worse fear of heights than mine but she wanted to see the views and we agreed to go up together, which we did. The summit commanded some excellent views in all directions:

From this vantage point, I could see a band of rain sweeping in and I resolved to be safely back down at the bottom before it reached me.

Dunsapie Loch

Descent was not exactly easier. It was less strenuous, but getting back off the summit offered all sorts of chances to awaken the wrath of my knee, so I had to go carefully.  With a little patience, I made it back down to the top of Long Row, where I veered off to the right for a short but gentle descent towards Dunsapie Loch (another of Prince Albert’s creations).

Dunsapie Loch is known to have a population of at least one escaped (or abandoned) terrapin, specifically a yellow-bellied slider (Trachemys scripta scripta), which hails from the southeastern US. It has been sighted and photographed by others and the SSPCA is aware of its existence. Naturally, I failed to catch even a glimpse of it.

Park Perimeter

At Dunsapie Loch, I rejoined Queen’s Drive, following it anti-clockwise until it formed a junction with Duke’s Walk at the northern end of St Margaret’s Loch. Here, I intended to go left, past the loch and thus back to the Scottish Parliament and Holyrood.  Instead, for some reason that I hope made sense at the time, but which I do not recall, I went right.

Duke’s Walk conveyed me to the edge of Holyrood Park, where I turned west, following Royal Park Terrace along the top of the park. It was at this point that the rain, which I had seen approaching when atop Arthur’s Seat, caught up with me and gave me not so much a drenching as a kind of half-hearted dampening.

Royal Park Terrace turned into Spring Gardens, which left the park behind and passed under a railway bridge. Just before it did so, a handy shop fed me snacks to maintain my good spirits in the face of mild meteorological moistness.

Queen Mary’s Bath House

As I followed the road around, it became Abbeyhill and I knew I was heading back to Holyrood.  On the way, it brought me to a strange, little two-storey building. This was known as Queen Mary’s Bath House (referencing Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587)), though whether it has ever contained a bath is unknown.

It used to be attached the wall around the King’s privy garden and was so probably a summer house.

Holyrood Revisited

Just beyond Queen Mary’s Bath house, I returned to the mini-roundabout outside the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

As I’d walked around the edge of Holyrood Park, my phone had let me know that my friend the Lemming had arrived in Edinburgh – he would be joining me for the next couple of days – and had checked into the same hotel.  I had originally expected to be halfway to Prestonpans at this point (it was much later in the day than I had planned, though I still had enough daylight to do my second walk if I still wanted).

The Lemming, who had pretty much spent the whole day on a train, was willing to stretch his legs in the rain, so all I needed to do now was head back to the hotel to collect him…

Homeward Stretch

Rose Street

I retraced my steps back up Canongate and across North Bridge to Princes Street, which was a stone’s throw from my hotel on Rose Street (the next street north).

Upon reaching Rose Street, I found the Lemming happily ensconced in a pub with a beer and this made me rethink my plans.  It was late in the day and still raining, on and off. Tomorrow, the forecast was for sunshine. I could add the walk to Prestonpans to tomorrow’s plan and it would still be doable, I thought. 

Basically, I just wanted to sit down with a pint and chat, so that’s exactly what I did.

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This time: 10½ miles
Total since Gravesend: 4,561½ miles

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