374 MEiWORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
charier, one of his mills of Dean, with the tenths of his mills of Liberton and Dean ; and
although all that now remains of the villages of Bell’s Mills and the Dean are af a much
more recent date, they still retain unequivocal evidences of considerable antiquity. Dates
and inscriptions, with crow-stepped gables and other features of the 17th century, are to
be found scattered among the more modern tenements, and it was only in the year 1845
that the curious old mansion of the Dean was demolished for the purpose of converting
the Deanhaugh into a public cemetery. This was another of those fine old aristocratic
dwellings that once abounded in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, but which are now
rapidly disappearing, like all its other interesting memorials of former times. It was a
monument of the Nisbeta of the Dean, a proud old race that are now extinct. They
had come to be the head of their house, as Nisbet relates with touching pathos, owing
to the failure of the Nisbets of that Ilk in his own person, and as such .“ laid aside the
Cheveron, a mark of cadency used formerly by the House of Dean, in regard that the
family of Dean is the only family of that name in Scotland that has right, by consent, to
represent the old original family of the name of Nisbet, since the only lineal male representer,
the author of this system, is like to go soon off the world, being an old man,
and without issue male or female.” The earliest notice in the minutes of Presbytery of
St Cuthberts of the purchase of a piece of family burying-ground, is by Sir William
Nisbet of Dean, in March 1645, the year of the plague. ‘‘ They grantit him ane place
at the north church door, eastward, five elnes of lenth, and thrie elnes of bredth.” It
appears to have been the piece of ground in the angle formed by the north transept and
the choir of the ancient Church of St Cuthbert ; and the vault which he erected there still
remains, surmounted with his arms ; a memorial alike of the demolished fane and the extinct
race. When we last saw it, the old oak door was broken in, and the stair that led down
to the chamber of the dead choked up with rank nettles and hemlock ;-the fittest monument
ihat could be devised for the old Barons of the Dean, the last of them now gathered
to his fathers.
The old mansion-house had on a sculptured stone over the east doorway the date 1614,
but other parts of the building bore evident traces of an earlier date. The large gallery had
an arched ceiling, painted in the same style as one already described in Blyth’s Close, some
portions of which had evidently been copied in its execution. The subjects were chiefly
sacred, and though rudely executed in distemper, had a bold and pleasing effect when seen
as a whole. One of the panels, now in the possession of C. K. Sharpe, Esq., bears the
date 1627. The dormer windows and principal doorways were richly decorated with sculptured
devices, inscriptions, and armorial bearings, illustrative of the successive alliances of
its owners; many of which have been preserved in the boundary walls of the cemetery
that now occupies its site. The most curious of these are two pieces of sculpture in 6amo
relievo, which surmounted two of the windows on the south front. On one of them a
judge is represented, seated on a throne, with a lamb in his arms ; in his left hand he holds
a drawn sword resting on his shoulder, and in his right hand a pair of scales. Two lions
rampant stand on either side, as if contending litigants for the poor lamb ; the one of them
.
1 Nisbet’a Heraldry, vol. ii part 4, p. 32.
a History of the Weat Kirk, p. 24.
Alexander Nisbet, Gent., published the first volume of hie system of
heraldry in 1722 ; his death took place shortly stteiwarda.-V& Preface to 2d Edition Fol.
