New Town.] ? . WOOD?S FARM. 11.5
Lang Dykes; by the old Queensferry Road that
I descended into the deep hollow, where Bell?s Mills
lie, and by Broughton Loan at the other end of the
northern ridge.
Bearford?s Parks on the west, and Wood?s Farm
on the east, formed the bulk of this portion of the
site; St. George?s Church is now in the centre of
the former, and Wemyss Place of the latter. The
hamlet and manor house of Moultray?s Hill arc now
occupied by the Register House; and where the
Royal Bank stands was a cottage called ?Peace
and Plenty,? from its signboard near Gabriel?s
Road, ? where ambulative citizens regaled themselves
with curds and cream,?? and Broughton was
deemed so far afield that people went there for
the summer months under the belief that they
were some distance from ?town, just as people
used to go to Powburn and Tipperlinn fifty years
later.
Henry Mackenzie, author of ?The Man of
Feeling,? who died in 1831, remembered shooting
snipes, hares, and partridges upon Wood?s Farm.
The latter was a tract of ground extending frGm
Canon Mills on the north, to Bearford?s Parks on
the south, and was long in possession of Mr. Wood,
of Warriston, and in the house thereon, his son,
the famous ?Lang Sandy Wood,? was born in
1725. It stood on the area between where Queen
Street and Heriot Row are now, and ?many still
alive,? says Chambers, writing in 1824, ?remember
of the fields bearing as fair and rich a crop of
wheat as they may now be said to bear houses.
Game used to be plentiful upon these groundsin
particular partridges and hares . . . . . Woodcocks
and snipe were to be had in all the damp
and low-lying situations, such as the Well-house
Tower, the Hunter?s Bog, and the borders of
Canon Mills Loch. Wild ducks were frequently
shot in the meadows, where in winter they are
sometimes yet to be found. Bruntsfield Links,
and the ground towards the Braid Hills abounded
in hares.?
In the list of Fellows of the Royal College of
Surgeons, Alexander Wood and his brother Thomas
are recorded, under date 1756 and 1715 respectively,
as the sons of ?Thomas Wood, farmer on
the north side of Edinburgh, Stockbridge Road,?
now called Church Lane.
A tradition exists, that about 1730 the magistrates
offered to a residenter in Canon Mills all the
ground between Gabriel?s Road and the Gallowlee,
in perpetual fee, at the annual rent of a crown
bowl of punch; but so worthless was the land then,
producing only whim and heather, that the offer
was rejected. (L? Old Houses in Edinburgh.?)
The land referred to is now worth more than
A15,ooo per annum. .
Prior to the commencement of the new town,
the only other edifices. on the site were the Kirkbraehead
House, Drumsheugh House, near the old
Ferry Road, and the Manor House of Coates.
Drumsheugh House, of which nothing now remains
but its ancient rookery in Randolph Crescent,
was removed recently. Therein the famous
Chevaliei Johnstone, Assistant A.D.C. to Prince
Charles; was concealed for a time by Lady Jane
Douglas, after the battle of Culloden, till he escaped
to England, in the disguise of a pedlar.
Alexander Lord Colville of Culross, a distinguished
Admiral of the White, resided there s u b
sequently. He served at Carthagena in 1741, at
Quebec and Louisbourg in the days of Wolfe, and
died at Drumsheugh on the zIst of May, 1770.
His widow, Lady Elizabeth Erskine, daughter of
Alexander Earl of Kellie, resided there for some
years after, together with her brother, the Honourable
Andrew Erskine, an officer of the old 71st,
disbanded in 1763, an eccentric character, who
figures among Kay?s Portraits, and who in
1793 was drowned in the Forth, opposite Caroline
Park. Lady Colville died at Drumsheugh in
the following year, when the house and lands
thereof reverted to her brother-in-law, John Lord
Colville of Culross. And so lately as 1811 the
mansion was occupied by James Erskine, Esq.,.
of Cambus.
Southward of Drumsheugh lay Bearford?s Parks,.
mentioned as ? Terras de Barfurd ? in an Act in.
favour of Lord Newbattle in 1587, named from
Hepburn of Bearford in Haddingtonshire.
In 1767 the Earl of Morton proposed to have a
wooden bridge thrown across the North Loch
from these parks to the foot of Warriston?s Close, but
the magistrates objected, on the plea that the property
at the dose foot was worth A20,ooo. The
proposed bridge was to be on a line with ?the
highest level ground of Robertson?s and Wood?s
Farms.? In the Edinburgh Adnediser for 1783
the magistrates announced that Hallow Fair was
to be ?held in the Middle Bearford?s Park.?
Lord Fountainhall, under dates 1693 and 1695,
records a dispute between Robert Hepburn of
Bearford and the administrators of Heriot?s hospital,
concerning ?the mortified annual rents
acclaimed out of his tenement in Edinburgh, called
the Black Turnpike,? and again in 1710, of an
action he raised against the Duchess of Buccleuch,
in which Sir Robert Hepburn of Bearford,
in I 633, is referred to, all probably of the same family.
The lands and houses of Easter and Wester
