KING’S STABLES, CASTLE BARNS, AND CASTLE HILL. I43
The poet was extremely proud of his new mansion’, and appears to have been somewhat
surprised to fiud that its fantastic shape rather excited the mirth than the admiration of his
fellow-citizens. The wags of the town compared it to a goose pie ; and on his complaining
of this one day to Lord Elibank, his lordship replied, ‘‘ Indeed, Allan, when I see you in
it, I think they are not far wrong! ”
On ‘the death of Allan Ramsay, in 1757, he was succeeded in his house by his son, the
eminent portrait-painter, who added a new front and wing to it, and otherwise modified its
original grotesqueness; and since his time it was the residence of the Rev. Dr Baird,
late Principal of the University. Some curious discoveries, made in the immediate neighbourhood
of the house, in the lifetime of the poet, are thus recorded in the Scots Magazine
for 1754,-(‘ About the middle of June, some workmen employed in levelling the upper
part of Mr Ramsay’s garden, in the Castle Hill, fell upon a subterraneous chamber about
fourteen feet square, in which were found an image of white stone, with a crown upon its
head, supposed to be the Virgiu Mary ; two brass candlesticks ; about a dozen of ancient
Scottish and French coins, and some other trinkets, scattered among the rubbish. By
several remains of burnt matter, and two cannon balls, it is guessed that the building above
ground was destroyed by the Castle in some former confusion.” This, we would be inclined
to think, may have formed a portion of the ancient Church of St Andrew, of which so little
is known; though, from Dlaitland’s description, the site should perhaps be looked for
somewhat lower down the bank. It is thus alluded to by him,--“ At the southern side of
the Nordloch, near the foot of the Castle Hill, stood a church, the remains whereof I am
informed were standiiig within these few years, by Professor Sir Robert Stewart, who had
often seen them. This I take to have been the Chnrch of St Andrew, near the Castle of
Edinburgh, to the Trinity Altar, in which Alexander Curor, vicar of Livingston, by a
deed of gift of the 20th December 1488, gave a perpetual annuity of twenty merks Scottish
money.” In the panelling of the Reservoir, which stands immediately to the south
of Ramsay Garden, a hole is still shown, which is said to have been occasioned by a shot
in the memorable year 1745. The ball was preserved for many years in the house, and
ultimately presented to the late Professor Playfair.
An old stone land occupies the corner of Ramsay Lane, on the north side of the Castle
Hill. It presents a picturesque front to the main street, surmounted with a handsome
double dormer window. On its eastern side, down Pipe’s Close, there is a large and
neatly moulded window, exhibiting the remains of a stone mullion and transom, with which
it has been divided; and, in the interior of the same apartment, directly opposite to this,
there are the defaced remains of a large gothic niche, the only ornamental portions of which
now visible are two light and elegant buttresses at the sides, affording indication of its
original decorations.
Tradition, as reported to us by several different parties, assigns this house to the Laird
of Cockpen, the redoubted hero, as we presume, of Scottish song ; and one party further
a5rms, in confirmation of this, that Ramsay Lane had its present name before the days
of the poet, having derived it from this mansion of the Ramsays of Cockpen.’ Its
Maitland, p. 206.
* The Lairds of Cockpen were U branch of the Rameays of Dalhousie ; Douglas’s Peerage, vol. i. p. 404. Maitland in
his List of Streets, &e., mentions a Ramaay’a Cloae without indicating it on the map.
