... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
his history, that Andrew Murray, an aged Presbyterian
minister, when he ...
Book 2 p. 202
(Score 0.21)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [G-ge Sqmm
over the head with sufficient strength to cut him
down. When this was seen, ...
Book 4 p. 342
(Score 0.21)
![THE ROYAL INFIRMARY. 299 h6rmary Street]
students to witness surgical operations. The Infirmary
has separate wards for male and female
patients, and a ward which is used as a Lock
hospital ; but even in ordinary periods the building
had become utterly incompetent for the service
of Edinburgh, and during the prevalence of an epidemic
afforded but a mere fraction of the required
accommodation, and hence the erection of its magnificent
successor, to which we shall refer elsewhere.
The Earl of Hopetoun, in 1742, and for the last
twenty-five years of his life, generously contributed
A400 per annum to the institution when it was
young and struggling. In 1750 Dr. Archibald Kerr
of Jamaica bequeathed to it an estate worth
E218 11s. 5d. yearly; and five years afterwards
the Treasury made it a gift of jG8,ooo j yet it has
never met with the support from Government. that
it ought to have done, and which similar institutions
in London receive.
But the institution owed most of its brilliant
success to Lord Provost Drummond. Among his
associates in this good work he had the honoured
members of the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons
in Edinburgh, ever first in all works of goodness and
charity; and the first Dr. Munro, Professor of
Anatomy, was singularly sanguine of the complete
success of the undertaking.
That portion of the house which was founded by
the Earl of Cromarty was opened for the reception
of patients in December, 1741. The theatre described
was made to serve the purposes also of a
chapel, and twelve cells on the ground floor, for cases
of delirium fremens, being found unnecessary, were
converted into kitchens and larders, &c. The
grounds around the house, consisting of two acres,
and long bounded on- the south by the city wall,
were laid out into grass walks for the convalescents,
and ultimately the house was amply supplied with
water from the city reservoir.
In the years 1743-4 the sick soldiers of the
regiments quartered in the Castle were accommodated
in the Infirmary; and in the stormy
period of the '45 it was of necessity converted into
a great military hospital for the sick and wounded
troops of both armies engaged at Prestonpans and
elsewhere ; and in I 748 the surgeon-apothecaries,
who since 1729 had given all manner of medical
aid gratis, were feed for the first time. Wounded
from our armies in Flanders have been sent there
for treatment.
In 1748, after paying for the site, building,
furniture, &c., the stock of the institution amounted
to &5,00o; and sick patients not wishing to be resident
were invited to apply for advice on Mondays
and Fridays, and were in cases of necessity
admitted as supernumeraries at the rate of 6d. per
day. About this time there was handed over an
Invalid Grant made by Government to the city,
on consideration of sixty beds being retained for
the use of all soldiers who paid 4d. per diem for
accommodation, This sum, &3, 2 70, was fully made
over to the managers, who, for some time afteqfound
themselves called upon to entertain so many military
patients, that a guard had to be mounted on
the house to enforce order; and liberty was obtained
to deposit all dead patients in Lady Yester's
churchyard, on the opposite side of the street.
Hitherto the physicians had, with exemplary
fidelity, attended the patients in rotation j but in
January, 1751, the managers on being empowered
by the general court of contributors, selected Dr.
David Clerk and Dr, Colin Drummond, physicians
in ordinary, paying them the small honorarium of
;E30 annually.
The University made offer to continue its
services, together with those of the ordinary physicians,
which offer was gladly accepted; and
though the practice fell into disuse, they were long
continued in monthly rotation. To the option of
the two ordinary physicians was left the visiting
of the patients conjointly, or by each taking his
own department. "It was their duty to sign the
tickets of admission and dismission. In case of any
unforeseen occurrences or dangerous distemper, the
matron or clerks were permitted to use this authe
rity ; the physicians en their amval, however, were
expected to append their signatures to the tickets.
The good and economy of the house from the first,
induced the managers to appoint two of their
number to visit the institution once every month,
who were enjoined to inquire how far the patients
were contented with their treatment, and to note
what they found inconsistent with the ordinary
regulations : their remarks to be entered in a book
of reports, to come under review at the first meeting
of managers." (" Journal of Antiq.," VoL 11.)
In 1754 some abuses prevailed in the mode of
dispensing medicines to the out-door patients,
detrimental to the finances ; an order was given for
a more judicious and sparing distribution. In the
following pear application was made to the Town
Council, as well as to the Presbytery of the Church,
to raise money at their several churches to provide
a ward for sick servants-which had been found
one of the most useful in the house. From its
first institution the ministers of the city had, in
monthly rotation, conducted the religious services ;
but in the middle of 1756 the managers appointed
aregular chaplain, whose duty it was to preach
every Monday in the theatre for surgical operations.](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v4p119.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. IV Page 299")
... ROYAL INFIRMARY. 299 h6rmary Street]
students to witness surgical operations. The Infirmary
has separate ...
Book 4 p. 299
(Score 0.21)
... and howitzers on the bastions of the latter
and the Calton Hill. The sharp encounter there,
and at St. ...
Book 1 p. 55
(Score 0.21)
![Leith.] GROWTH OF THE PORT. 27.5
the sirpleth of woll and skin, because sho is fraughtit
in and furth, and the better chaip inwart becaus
sho fraucht swa deir furthwart; and this frauchtbg
is maid in the form of the statutes of the Toune
and Act ,of Parliament, the port oppin and the
nychtbouris firs seruit?
In 1519 the Provost and Council ordained the
water bailie of Leith to await the entry of all ships
at the port, and to see that no wine, timber, 01
other portions of the cargo be sold till duly entered
and paid for, the king?s grace and the city
first served ; and if any goods were sold or tapped,
they should be arrested.
The numerous rules and laws which were enacted
in those days with reference to shipping,
navigation, and foreign commerce, evince that the
attention of the Scottish legislature was particularly
directed to maritime affairs. There was an
enactment which ordained that ships and fishingboats
of not less than twenty tons should be built
and equipped with appropriate nets and tackling
by all burghs and seaport towns.
By an Act passed in the second Parliament of
James III., in 1466, no ship from Leith or any
other port could be freighted without a charterparty,
whereof the points were: ? What the master
of the ship shall furnish to the merchant, that in
case of debate betwixt them, they underly the law
of the burgh whereto the ship ,is fraughted. That
the goods be not spilt by ill-stalling ; that no goods
be shown or stricken up ; that the master have no
goods in his over-loft, or if he do, these goods pay
no fraught. That every ship exceeding five lasts
of goods pay to the chaplain of the nation a sack
fraught, and if within five lasts, the half of it, under
pain of five pounds; and that no drink-silver be
taken by the master and his doers, under the same
pain. And homeward, a tun fraught to the kirkwork
of the town they are fraughted to.??
In 1488 it was ordained that all ships, Scottish
or foreign, should arrive only at free burghs, and
the prohibition of navigation between All Saints
Day and Candlemas was renewed; and in -1535
it was ordered that ships should be ?freighted to
Flanders only twice yearly, to the Easter market,
and that held on the 3rd of May. The exportation
of all tallow was strictly forbidden, as the
realm only furnished a sufficient quantity for home
consumption.
By an Act of James VI., no ship could sail without
the king?s consent, under pain of being arrested
by the conservator.
In March, 1567, there was a frightful tempest of
wind, which, says Birrel, ?blew a very grate shippe
out of the Rode of Leith.? He records that in
.-
1596, between July and August, sixty-six ships
arrived in the harbour laden with victual
In 1616 the same monarch grauted a patent of
the whale fishery for thirty-five years to Sir George
Hay and Mr. Thomas Murray, who fitted out two
ships for that purpose. Nicol mentions that, in
1652 ?there canie into the very Brig of Leith?
a whale, which rendered much profit to the English
garrison there.
In September, 1641, a Bill was brought before
the Parliament at Edinburgh by John, Earl of
Rothes, Sir George Hamilton of Blackburn,
Andrew Eusley, and George h o t , merchants, to
enforce restitution from the Hamburgers to the
value of 300,000 merks, taken from them in shipping
and goods, and to grant Letters of Marque against
the said Hamburgers; and in the ensuing November
Letters of Reprisal by sea and land were
granted under the Great Seal.
In 1651 an English ship, bound for Leith was
captured by the captain of the Bass, and her
crew made prisoners, some being placed on the
isle and others sent to Tantallon, She had on
board 10,000 pairs of shoes, 6,000 pairs of boots,
5,000 saddles and sets of horse furniture, ten tons
of London beeire and als muche bisquett as should
have served Cromwell for a month,? says Sir James
Balfour. Her cargo was handed over to Sir John
Smith, Commissary-General of the Scottish army.
In the May of the same year Captain Murray,
commander of a Scottish frigate, took another English
ship, laden with provisions, which he handed
over to the army, but retained the vessel as the prize
of himself and crew.
In 1656 Leith possessed only three vessels of
250 tons, and eleven of 20 tons each.
In 1661 the Scottish Parliament passed an Act
for the encouragement of shipping and navigation,
ordaining that all goods be transported in Scottish ?
ships ?from the original places, whence they are
in use first to be transported.? That all Scottish
ships should be navigated by a Scottish master,
and that at least three-parts of his crew should be
Scotsmen. The Act contains an order for verifying
a ship to be Scottish, and getting a certificate
thereof; and that no customer ?allow the benefit
of a Scot?s skipper to any ship until the same be
so verified, under pain of deprivation.? This Act
was not to extend to imports from Asia, Africa,
America, Muscovy, or Italy.
The Iirst return of tonnage for Leith, preserved
in the ?Archives of the Royal Burghs,? is dated
1692, when the port could only boast of twentynine
ships, with an aggregate tonnage of 1,702
tons, the estimated value of which was ;G7,1oo](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v6p094.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. VI Page 275")
... GROWTH OF THE PORT. 27.5
the sirpleth of woll and skin, because sho is fraughtit
in and furth, and the ...
Book 6 p. 275
(Score 0.21)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Edinburgh Castle.
entrance to the apartment in which her daughter
was delivered of ...
Book 1 p. 78
(Score 0.21)
... 437
airmy, wer all present. Thair wes a gaird, also, of the maist able burgwis of the bun, quha did ...
Book 10 p. 476
(Score 0.21)
... OLD APU?D NEW EDINBURGH. [Corstorphine.
meaning, no doubt, the panelled box-beds so
common of old in ...
Book 5 p. 114
(Score 0.21)
... AND NEW EDINEURGH. [South Bridge.
. . .~ 374
in 1765, and two ancient thoroughfares, the Wynds
of Marlin and ...
Book 2 p. 374
(Score 0.21)
... INDEX TO THE PORTKAITS. ETC .
No . Pagc
Campbell. Mr. John. precentor ...........c civ 95
Campbell. Donald. ...
Book 9 p. 677
(Score 0.21)
... with other four in the angles. The tiar, or
bonnet, was of purple velvet; but, in 1685, it got a
.cap of ...
Book 1 p. 74
(Score 0.21)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [ Holyrood.
The Edinburgh HeraZd of April, 1797, mentions
the departure froni Holyrood ...
Book 3 p. 78
(Score 0.21)
... of glittering jewels, of which Tytler gives
the list. In the ?inventory? of the Jewel House
are mentioned ...
Book 1 p. 35
(Score 0.21)
![THE PRECEPTORY OF ST. ANTHONY. 215 Leith]
not making any deliberate assault ; but a pistol
shot was heard, and in a few minutes the Sieur de
la Roche lay dead, with a sword thrust in his body,
while Isaac had a finger nearly hewn OK
The guard now came on the scene, and Mowat
was found under an outer stair, with a bent sword
in his hand, bloody from point to hilt, his hand
wounded, and the sleeves of his coat stained with
blood. On seeing the dead body, he viewed it
without emotion, and merely remarked that he
wondered who had slain him.
The Master, Mowat, and James Sinclair the writer,
were all tried for the murder of Elias Poiret before
the Court of Justiciary, but the jury brought in a
verdict of not proven. The whole affair might
have been easily explained, but for heat of temper,
intemperance, and the ready resort to arms so usual
in those days. The three Frenchmen concerned in
it were Protestant refugees who were serving as
privates in the Scottish Life Guards. The Mastet
of Tarbet became Earl of Cromarty in 1714 and
survived the death of Poiret forty years. Two of
his sons, who were officers in the Scots-Dutch
Brigade, perished at sea, and his eldest, the third
and last Earl of Cromarty, was nearly brought to
Tower Hill in 1746 for his loyalty to the House of
Stuart.
No. 141 Kirkgate was long the place of business
of Mr. Alexander Watson, who is chiefly remarkable
as being the nephew and close correspondent
of a very remarkable man, who frequently resided
with him-Robert Watson, who was made Principal
of the Scots College at Paris by the Emperor
Napoleon I., an office which he held for six years.
It was to his nephew at Leith, after his escape to
Rome (having been tried at the Old Bailey as
President of a Corresponding Society), he confided
his discovery of a large mass of correspondence
known as ? The Stuart Papers,? which he
purchased (as stated in the Courunt for 1819.)
In one of his letters, dated London, 6th April,
1818, he states that they consist ofhalf a million of
pieces, and are valued at ~300,000. ?? The Pope,
however, took military possession of them, under
the protest that they were of too much importance
to belong to a private individual. I protested
against the arbitrary proceedings of his Holiness.
The Prince Regent sent two ships of war to Civita
Vecchia to bring them to London, and they are
now in Carlton House.?
To his nephew in the Kirkgate he subsequently
wrote that a Royal Commissiolr under the Great
Seal (including Sir James Mackintosh) was a p
pointed to examine these valuable papers ; and in
1824 he wrote that amongst other things of some
value which have fallen into my possession, are the
carriage and tent-bed of Bonaparte, taken at the
battle of Waterloo. Further events will decide
to what purposes I may apply it (the carriage),
though it is probable I shall keep it for my own
use.?
This singular person committed suicide in 1838,
by strangling himself in a London tavern, in the
ninety-second year of his age--?a case of suicide,?
it was said, ?unparalleled in the annals of sorrow.?
On the east side of the Kirkgate, to take the
edifices in succession there, there was founded by
Robert Logan of Restalrig, in 1435, a preceptory
for the canons of St. Anthony, the only establkhment
of the kind in Scotland.
Arnot, in his history, unthinkingly mentions ?? the
monastery of Knights Templars of St. Anthony?
at Leith. These canons, says Chalmers, ? seem to
have been an order of religious knights, not
Templars. The only document in which they are
called Templars is a charter of James VI. in 1614,
giving away their establishment and revenues; and
this mistake of an ignorant clerk is wildly repeated
by Arnot.?
Their church, burying-ground, and gardens were
in St. Anthony?s Wynd, an alley off the Kirkgate ;
and the first community was brought from St
Anthony of Vienne, the seat of the order in France
They were formed in honour of St. Anthony, the
patriarch of monks, who was born at Coma, a
village of Heraclea on the borders of Arcadia, in
A.D.?z~I, and whose sister was placed in the first
convent that is recorded in history. A hermit by
habit, he dwelt long in the ruins of an old castle
that overlooked the Nile; and after his death (said
to have been in 356) his body was deposited in the
church of La Motte St. Didier, at Vienne, when,
according to old traditions, those labouring under
the pest known as St. ,4nthony?s Fire-a species of
erysipelas-were miraculously cured by praying at
his shrine.
Gaston, a noble of Vienne, and his son Gironde,
filled with awe, we are told, by these wonderful
cures, devoted their lives and estates to found a
hospital for those who laboured under this disease,
and seven others joined them in their attendance
on the sick; and on these Hospitaller Brethren
Boniface VIII. bestowed the Benedictine Priory
of Vienne, giving them the rules of St. Austin, and
declaring the Abbot General of this new orderthe
Canons Regular of St, Anthony. The superiors
of the subordinate preceptones were called commanders,
says Alban Butler, ? and their houses are
called commandenes, as when they were Hospitallers?
.](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v6p034.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. VI Page 215")
... PRECEPTORY OF ST. ANTHONY. 215 Leith]
not making any deliberate assault ; but a pistol
shot was heard, and in ...
Book 6 p. 215
(Score 0.21)
... HALL. 319 Riccar&&l
He was at once-for some reasons known at the
time-accused of having ...
Book 6 p. 319
(Score 0.21)
... PPENBIX. 45 5
containing-apparently the skeletons of a man and two women ; which, says Mr Skene, in narrating ...
Book 10 p. 495
(Score 0.21)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith
The Old and New Ship are good examples of
what these old taverns were, as they ...
Book 6 p. 246
(Score 0.21)
![238 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
other, Willielmina, became the wife of John Lord
Glenorchy.
The fate of the Earl of Sutherland, and of his
countess, whose beauty excited the admiration of
all at the coronation of George III., was a very
cloudy one. In frolicking with their first-born, a
daughter, the earl let the infant drop, and it sustained
injuries from which it never recovered, and
the event had so serious an effect on his mind,
that he resorted to Bath, where he died of a
malignant fever. For twenty-one days the countess,
then about to have a babe again, attended him
unremittingly, till she too caught the distemper, and
predeceased him by a few days, in her twenty-sixth
year. Her death was sedulously concealed from
him, yet the day before he expired, when delirium
passed away, he said, I am going to join my dear
Wife,? as if his mind had already begun to penetrate
the veil that hangs between this world and the
next.
In one grave in Holyrood, near the north-east
corner of the ruined chapel, the remains of this
ill-fated couple were laid, on the 9th of August,
1766.
Lady Glenorchy, a woman remarkable for the
piety of her disposition, was far from happy in her
marriage j but we are told that she met with her
rich reward, even iii this world, for she enjoyed
the applause of the wealthy and the blessings of the
poor, with that supreme of all pleasures-the conviction
that the eternal welfare of those in whose
fate she was chiefly interested was forwarded by
her precepts and example.?
In after years, the Earl of Hopetoun, when
acting as Royal Commissioner to the General
Assembly, was wont to hold his state levees in the
house that had been Lord Alva?s.
To the east of hfylne?s Square stood some old
alleys which were demolished to make way for the
North Bridge, one of the greatest local undertakings
of the eighteenth century. One of these alleys was
known as the Cap and Feather Close, immediately
above Halkerston?s Wynd. The lands that formed
the east side of the latter were remaining in some
places almost intact till about 1850.
In one of these, but which it was impossible
to say, was born on the 5th of September, 1750,
that luckless but gifted child of genius, Robert
Fergusson, the poet, whose father was then a clerk
in the British Linen Company; but even the site
of his house, which has peculiar claims on the
interest of every lover of Scottish poetry, cannot
be indicated.
How Halkerston?s Wynd obtained its name we
have already told. Here was an outlet from the
ancient city byway of a dam or dyke across the
loch, to which Lord Fountainhall refers in a case
dated zIst February, 1708. About twenty years
before that time it would appear that the Town
Council ?had opened a new port at the foot
of Halkerston?s Wynd for the convenience of those
who went on foot to Leith; and that Robert
Malloch, having acquired some lands on the other
side of the North Loch, and made yards and built
houses thereon, and also having invited sundry
weavers and other good tradesmen to set up
on Moutree?s Hill [site of the Register House], and
the deacons of crafts finding this prejudicial
to them, and contrary to the 154th Act of Parliament,
I 592,?? evading which, these craftsmen paid
neither scot, lot, nor stent,? the magistrates closed
up the port, and a law plea ensued between them
and the enterprising Robert Malloch, who was
accused of filling up a portion of the bank of the
loch with soil from a quarry. ?The town, on the
other hand, did stop the vent and passage over the
loch, which made it overtlow and drown Robert?s
new acquired ground, of which he complained as
an act of oppression.?
Eventually the magistrates asserted that the loch
was wholly theirs, and ?( that therefore he could
drain no part of it, especially to make it regorge
and inundate on their side. The Lords were
going to take trial by examining the witnesses, but
the magistrates prevented it, by opening the said
port of their own accord, without abiding an order,
and let the sluice run,? by which, of course, the
access by the gate was rendered useless.
Kinloch?s Close adjoined Halkerston?s Wynd, and
therein, till about 1830, stood a handsome old
substantial tenement, the origin and early occupants
of which were all unknown. A mass of curious
and abutting projections, the result of its peculiar
site, it had a finely-carved entrance door, with
the legend, Peir. God. in . Luzy., 1595, and the
initials I. W., and the arms of the surname of
Williamson, together with a remarkable device, a
saltire, from the centre of which rose a crosssymbol
of passion.
Passing Allan Ramsay?s old shop, a narrow bend
gives us access to Carrubber?s Close, the last stronghold
of the faithful Jacobites after 1688. Episcopacy
was abolished in 1689, and although from
that period episcopal clergymen had no legal provision
or settlement, they were permitted, without
molestation, to preach in meeting-houses till I 746 ;
but as they derived no emolument from Government,
and no provision from the State, they did not,
says Arnot, perplex their consciences with voluminous
and unnecessary oaths, but merely excluded](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p058.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. II Page 238")
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
other, Willielmina, became the wife of John Lord
Glenorchy.
The fate of ...
Book 2 p. 238
(Score 0.21)
... - OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [West Church.
mode of procedure, made no resistance; and so
.active were the workmen ...
Book 3 p. 138
(Score 0.21)
![Bell?s Mills.] LADY SINCLAIR. 63
portray. She was born Margaret Learmouth, at
~ 6 , St John Street, in the Canongate, in January)
1794, while that street and much of the neighbour.
hood around it were still the centre of the literaq
and fashionable society of the then secluded
capital of Scotland.
Thus she was old enough to have seen and
known many who were ? QUt with the Prince ? b
1745, and reminiscences of these people and 01
their days were ever a favourite theme with hei
when she had a sympathetic listener. ?Old
maiden ladies,? she was wont to say, with a sort 01
sad pitifulness in her tone, ?were the last lea1
Jacobites in Edinburgh ; spinsterhood in its loneli.
ness remained then ever true to Prince Charlit
and the vanished dreams of youth.? Lady Sinclaii
used to relate how in the old Episcopal Chapel in
the Cowgate, now St. Patrick?s Church, the last
solitary representative of these Jacobite ladies nevei
failed to close her prayer-book and stand erect, in
d e n t protest, when the prayer for King George 111.
?( and the reigning family ? was read in the Church
Service. Early in her girlhood her family removed
from St. John Street to Picardy Place, and the
following adventure, which she used to relate,
curiously evinces the difference between the social
customs of the early years of this century and those
of the present day.
? Once, when she was returning from a ball, the
bearers of her sedan-chair had their bonnets carried
off by the wind, while the street oil-lamps were
blown out, and the ? Donalds ? departed in pursuit
of their head-gear. It was customary in those
times for gentlemen to escort the sedan-chairs
that held their fair partners of the evening, and
the two gentlemen who were with her-the Duke
af Argyle and Sir John Clerk of Penicuickseized
hold of the spokes and carried her home.
?Gentlemen were gentlemen in those days,? she was
wont to add, ?and Edinburgh was the proper
residence of the Scottish aristocracy-not an inn
.or a half-way house between London and the
Highland muirs.? ?
In 1821 she was married to Mr. Sinclair, afterwards
Sir John Sinclair, Bart., of Dunbeath, and
for fifty years afterwards her home was at the
House of Barock, in Caithness, where her influence
among the poor was ever felt and gratefully
acknowledged. She was a staunch and
amusingly active Liberal, and, with faculties clear
and unimpaired in the last week of her long life,
noted and commented on Mr. Gladstone?s famous
? hlidlothian speeches,? and rejoiced over his
success. She was always scrupulously dressed,
and in the drawing-room down to the day of
her death. She saw all her children die before
her, in early or middle life; her eldest, Colonel
Sinclair, dying in India in his forty-fifth year. After
Sir John?s death she settled in Edinburgh.
?I am the last leaf on the outmost bough,?
she was wont to say, ?and want to fall where I
was born.? And so she passed away.
When she was interred within the Chapel Royal
at Holyrood, it was supposed that she would be one
of the last to whom that privilege would be accorded.
It was not so ; for the remains of James,
Earl of Caithness, who died in America, were laid
there in April, 1881.
The Dean, or Den, seems to have been the old
general name for the rocky hollow now spanned
by the stately bridge of Telford.
Bell?s Mills, a hamlet deep down in a grassy
glen, with an old bridge, aver which for ages lay
the only road to the Queensferry, and now overshadowed
by fashionable terraces and crescents, is
described by Kincaid in 1787 as a village, ?one and
three-quarter niiles north-west of Edinburgh, on the
north bank of the Water of Leith, and .a quarter
of a mile west of West Leith village.? * It received
its name from an old proprietor of the
flour-mills, which are still grinding there, and have
been long in existence. ?? On Thursday night
last,? says the Zdinburgh Advertseer of 3rd January:
1764, ? the high wall at Bells Brae, near the
Water of Leith Bridge, fell down, by which accident
the footpath and part of the turnpike road are
carried away, which makes it hazardous for carriages.
This notice may be of use to those who have
occasion to pass that road.?
At the head of the road here, near the Dean
Bridge, is a Free Church, built soon after the
Disruption-a little edifice in the Saxon style, with
a square tower ; and a quaint little ancient crowstepped
building, once a toll-house, has built into
it some of the old sculpture from the Dean House.
At the foot of the road, adjoining Bell?s Mills
Bridge, are old Sunbury distillery and house, in a
lelta formed by the Leith, which sweeps under a
steep and well-wooded bank which is the boundary
3f the Dean Cemetery.
The Water of Leith village, which bears marks of
peat antiquity, is fast disappearing amid the enxoachments
of modern streets, and yet all that renains
of it, deep down in the rocky hollow, where
:he stream, flowing under its quaint old bridge,
3etween ancient mills, pours in a foaming sheet
wer a high, broad weir, is wonderfully striking
ind picturesque. Dates, inscriptions, crowstepped
:ables, and other features of the seventeenth
:entury, abound here in profusion.
.](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v5p074.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. V Page 63")
... Mills.] LADY SINCLAIR. 63
portray. She was born Margaret Learmouth, at
~ 6 , St John Street, in the ...
Book 5 p. 63
(Score 0.21)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. . [High Street.
?capital already created under the last charter is
L;~OO,OOO stock, ...
Book 2 p. 280
(Score 0.21)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Restalrig.
latter married a lady whom Burke calls ?Miss
Alston, of America,? and died ...
Book 5 p. 138
(Score 0.21)
![Castle Terrace.] THE UNION CANAL 215
newest mechanical appliances, including hydraulic
machinery for shifting the larger scenes. The
proscenium was 32 feet wide by 32 feet in height,
with an availabie width behind of 74 feet, expanding
backwards to 114 feet.
The lighting was achieved ?by a central sunlight
and lamps hung on the partition walls. The ventilation
was admirable, and the temperature was
regulated by steam-pipes throughout the house.
But the career of this fine edifice as a theatre
was very brief, and proved how inadequate Edinburgh
is, from the peculiar tastes and wishes of
its people, to supply audiences for more than two
or three such places of entertainment. It speedily
proved a failure, and being in the inarket was
purchased by the members of the United Presbyterian
Church, who converted it into a theological
hall, suited for an audience of 2,ooo in all.
The total cost of the building to the denomination,
including the purchase of the theatre, amounted
to ~47,000. Two flats under the street $oor are
fitted up as fireproof stores, which will cover in all
an area of 3,500 square yards.
In connection with this defunct theatre it was
proposed to have a winter garden and aquarium.
Near it the eye is arrested by a vast pile of new
buildings, fantastic and unique in design and
detail, the architect of which has certainly been
fortunate, at least, in striking out something
original, if almost indescribable, in domestic architecture.
Free St. Cuthbert?s Church is in Spittal Street,
which is named from Provost Sir James Spittal,
and is terminated by the King?s Bridge at the base
of the Castle Rock.
All this area of ground and that lying a little
to the westward have the general name of the
Castle Barns, a designation still preserved in a
little street near Port Hopetoun. A map of the
suburbs, in 1798, shows Castle Barns to be an
isolated hamlet or double row of houses on Lhe
Falkirk Road, distant about 250 yards from the
little pavilion-roofed villa still standing at the Main
Point. Maitland alleges that somewhere thereabout
an ediiice was erected for the accommodation
of the royal retinue when the king resided
in the Castle; and perhaps such may have been
the case, but the name implies its having been
the grange or farm attached to the fortress, and
this idea is confirmed by early maps, when a considerable
portion of the ground now lying on both
sides of the Lothian Road is included under the
general term.
On the plateau at the head of the latter, bordered
on the south-east by the ancient way to Fountainbridge,
stands one of the most hideous features
of Edinburgh-the Canal Basinl with its surrounding
stores and offices. 8
In 1817 an Act of Parliament was procured,
giving power to a joint stock company to cut a
a canal from Edinburgh to the Forth and Clyde
Canal at a point about four miles before the communication
of the latter with the Forth. The canal
was begun in the following year and completed in
1822. The chief objects of it were the transmission
of heavy goods and the conveyance of passengers
between the capital and Glasgow-a system long
since abandoned ; the importation to the former
of large coal supplies from places to the *estward,
and the exportation of manure from the city into
agricultural districts. The eastern termination,
calledPort Hopetoun, occasioned the rapid erect;on
of a somewhat important suburb, where before there
stood only a few scattered houses surrounded by
fields and groves of pretty trees; but the canal,
though a considerable benefit to the city in prerailway
times, has drained a great deal of money
from its shareholders.
Though opened in 182, the canal was considerably
advanced in the year preceding. In the
Week0 Journd for November 7, 1821, we read
that ?from the present state of the works, the
shortening of the days, and the probability of being
retarded by the weather, it seems scarcely possible
that the trade of this navigation can be opened up
sooner than the second month of spring, which
will be exactly four years from its commencement.
Much has been done within the last few months
on the west end of the line, while at the east end
the forming of the basin, which is now ready to
receive the water, together with the numerous
bridges necessary in the first quarter of a mile, have
required great attention. , Of the passage boats
building at the west end of Lochrin distillery, two
of which we mentioned some time ago as being
in a forward state, one is now completed ; she is
in every respect an elegant and comfortable vessel,
and is called the FZoora Mac Ivor; the second is
considerably advanced, and a third boat after the
same model as the others is commenced building.?
In the same (now defunct) periodical, for 1st
January, 1822, we learn that the RZora, ?the first
of the Union Canal Company?s passage boats, was
yesterday launched from the company?s building
yard, at the back of Gilmore Place.?
One of the best features of street architecture
that sprung up in this quarter after the formation
of the canal was Gardiner?s Crescent., with its
chapel, which was purchased from the United
Secession Congregation by the Kirk Session of St.](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v4p035.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. IV Page 215")
... Terrace.] THE UNION CANAL 215
newest mechanical appliances, including hydraulic
machinery for shifting the ...
Book 4 p. 215
(Score 0.21)
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