KING‘S STABLES, CASTLE BARNS, AND CASTLE HILL. 135
so generally placed on them, all afford tests as to the period of their erection, fully a6
definite and trustworthy as those that mark the progressive stages of the ecclesiastical
architecture of the Middle Ages. The earliest form of the crow-stepped gable presents a
series of pediments surmounting the steps, occasionally highly ornamented, and always
giving a rich effect to the building. Probably the very latest specimen of this, in Edinburgh,
is the h e old building of the Mint, in the Cowgate, which
bears the date 1574 over its principal entrance, while its other ornaments
axe similar to many of a more recent date. After the adoption
of the plain square crow-step, it seems still to have been held as an
important feature of the building ; in many of the older houses, the
arms or initials, or some other device of the owner, are to be found
on the lowest of them, even where the buildings are so lofty as to
place them almost out of sight. The dormer window, surmounted
with the thistle, rose, &c., and the high-peaked gable to the street,
are no less familiar features in our older domestic architecture.
Many specimens, also, of windows originally divided by stone mullions, and with lead
casements, still remain in the earliest mansions of the higher classes ; and in several of
these there are stone recesses or niches of a highly ornamental character, the use of which
has excited considerable discussion among antiquaries. A later form of window than
the last, exhibits the upper part glazed, and finished below with a richly carved wooden
transom, while the under half is closed with shutters, occasionally highly adorned on the
exterior with 8 variety of carved ornaments.
Towards the close of Charles 11,’s reign, an entirely new order of architecture was
adopted, engrafting the mouldings and some of the principal features of the Italian
style upon the forms that previously prevailed. The Golfers’ Land in the Canongate is
a good and early specimen of this. The gables are still steep, and the roofs of a high
pitch; and while _the front assumes somewhat of the character of a pediment, the crow:
steps are retained on the side gables ; but these features soon after disappear, and give way
to a regular pediment, surmounted with urns, and the like ornaments,-a very good specimen
of which remains on the south side of the Castle Hill, as well as others in various
parts of the Old Town. The 6ame district still presents good specimens of the old wooden
fronted lands, with their fore stairs and handsome inside turnpike from the fist floor, the
construction of which Maitland affirms to be coeval with the destruction of the extensive
forests of the Borough Muir, in the reign of James IV. We furnish a view of some other
remarkably picturesque specimens of the same style of building in this locality, recently
demolished to make way for the New College. All these various features of the ancient
domestic architecture of the Scottish Capital will come under review in the course of the
Work, in describing the buildings most worthy of notice that still remain, or have been
demolished during the present century.
f
Immediately below the Castle rock, on its south side, there exists an ancient appendage
of the Royal Palace of the Castle, still retaining the name of the King’s Stables, although
no hoof of the royal stud has been there for wellnigh three centuries. Thie district lies
without the line of the ancient city wall, and was therefore not only in an exposed sitna-
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