338 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Roxburgh Place.
sion, belonging to the Lords Ross and to the age
of stately ceremony and stately manners, occupied
till the middle of the eighteenth century the site
occupied the same apartment as that in which
resided, till the year before his death, in 1785,
Alexander Kunciman, one of the most eminent
Scottish artists of his day, and where, no doubt, he
must have entertained the poet Robert Fergusson,
?? while with ominous fitness he sat as his model
for the Prodigal Son.?
Nicolson Street church, erected in 1819-20, at
a cwt of x6,000, has a handsome Gothic front,
with two turreted pinnacles ninety feet in height.
It is built upon the site of the old Antiburgher
Meeting-house, and is notable for the ministry of
Dr. John Jamieson, author of several theological
works, and of the well-known ? Etymological Dictionary
of the Scottish Language.? It was among
the first efforts at an improved style of church
architecture in Edinburgh, where, as elsewhere in
Scotland after the Keformation, the accommodation
of the different congregations in the homeliest
manner was all that was deemed necessary.
The pond sam parish called Lady Glenorchy?s
lies eastward of Nicolson Street, and therein quite
a cluster of little churches has been erected. The
parish church was built as a relief chapel in 1809,
by the Rev. Mr. Johnstone, and altered in 1814,
when it was seated for 990 persons. The Independent
congregation in Richmond Couk was
established in 1833 ; but their place of worship till
1840 was built about 1795 by the Baptists. The
Hebrew congregation was established in 1817, but
has never exceeded IOO souls. The Episcopal
congregation of St. Peter?s, Roxburgh Place, was
established in 1791, and its place of worship consisted
of the first and second flats of a five-storeyed
tenement, and was originally built, at the sole
expense of the clergyman, for about 420 persons.
To Roxburgh Place came, in 1859, the congregation
of Lady Glenorchy?s church, which had been
demolished by the operations of the North British
Railway. The Court of Session having found that
city. In those days the mansion, which was a
square block with wings, was approached by an
avenue through a plantation upwards of sixty yards
ROSS
this body must be kept in full communion with
the Established Church, authorised the purchase of
Roxburgh Place chapel in lieu of the old place of
worship, and trustees were appointed to conduct
their affairs.
The chapel handed over to them was that of
the Relief Communion just mentioned. Externally
it has no architectural pretensions ; but many may
remember it as the meeting-place of the ?Convocation
? which preceded the ever-memorable
secession in 1843, after which it remained closed
and uncared for till it came into the hands of the
Glenorchy trustees in 1859, in so dilapidated a condition
that their first duty was to repair it before
the congregation could use it.
The remains of the pious Lady Glenorchy, which
had been removed from the old church near the
North Bridge, were placed, in 1844, in the vaults
of St. John?s church ; but the trustees, wishing to
comply as far as was in their power with the
wishes of the foundress, that her remains should
rest in her own church, had a suitable vault built
in that at Roxburgh Place. It was paved and
covered with stone, set in Roman cement, and
formed on the right side of the pulpit.
Therein her body was laid on the evening of
Saturday, 31st December, 1859. The marble
tablet, which was carefully removed from the old
church, was placed over her grave, with an additional
inscription explaining the circumstance which
occasioned her new place of interment.
The portion of St. Cuthbert?s garish which was
disjoined and attached to Lady Glenorchy?s is
bounded by Nicolson Street and the Pleasance on
the west and east, by Drummond Street on the
north, and Richmond Street on the south, with an
average population of about 7,000 souls.
Roxburgh Terrace is built on what was anciently
called Thomson?s Park; and the place itself was
named the Back Row in the city plan of 1787.
CHAPTER XL.
GEORGE SQUARE AND THE VICINITY
How-The last Lord Ross-Earlier Residents in the Square-House of Walter Scott, W.S.-Sir Waltcr?s Boyhood-Bickas-Grcen
Breeks-The Edinburgh Light Horse-The Scots Brigad+Admiral Duncan--Lord Advocate Dundas-The Grants of Kilgrastonhmn
Dunda+Sedan Chak--Campbells of Snccoth-Music Class Room-The Eight Southern DistrictAhapel of Ease-Windmill
Street-Euccleuch Place-Jeffrey?s First House there-The Burgh Loch-Society of Impraven-The Meadow.
*lEe %we.] THE LORDS ROSS. 339
long, from where the north-east end of Teviot Row
was latterly. There were the stable offices; in
front of the house was a tree of great size, while
its spacious garden was bordered by Bristo Street.
When offered for sale, in March, 1761, it was
described in a newspaper of the period as ?ROSS
House, with the fields and gardens lying around
it, consisting of about twenty-fou acres, divided as
follows : About an acre and a half in a field and
court about the house; seventeen acres in one
field lying to the south-west, between it and Hope
Park j the rest into kitchen-gardens, running along
Bristo Street and the back of the wall. The house
consists of dining, drawing, and dressing rooms,
six bed-chambers, several closets and garrets; in
the ground storey, kitchen, larder, pantry, milkhouse,
laundry, cellars, and accommodation for
servants, &c?
This house, which was latterly used as a lying-in
hospital, was occupied for some time prior to 1753
by George Lockhart of Carnwath, during whose
time it was the scene of many a gay rout, ball, and
ridotto ; but it was, when the family were in Edinburgh,
the permanent residence of the Lords Ross
of Halkhead, a family of great antiquity, dating
back to the days of King Willmm the Lion,
1165.
In this house died, in June, 2754, in the seventy
third year of his age, George, twelfth Lord ROSS,
Commissioner of the Customs, whose body wa
taken for interment to Renfrew, the burial-place 01
the family. His chief seats were Halkhead and
Melville Castle, He was succeeded by his son,
the Master of Ross, who waa the last lord of that
ilk, and who died in his thirty-fourth year, unmarried,
at Mount Teviof the seat of his uncle, the Marquis
of Lothian, in the following August, and was alsa
taken to Renfrew for purposes of interment.
His sister Elizabeth became Countess of Glas
gow, and eventually his heiress, and through he1
the Earls of Glasgow are also Lords Ross of
Halkhead, by creation in 1815.
Another sister was one of the last persons in
Scotland supposed to be possessed of an evil
spirit-Mary, who died unmarried. A correspondent
of Robert Chambers states as follows:-
??A person alive in 1824 told me that, when a
child, he saw her clamber up to the top of an oldfashioned
four-post bed. In her fits it was impossible
to hold her.?
At the time-Ross House was offered for sale
the city was almost entirely confined within the
Flodden Wall, the suburbs being of small extent-
Nicolson Street and Square, Chapel Street, the
southern portion of Bristo Street, Crichton Street,
-
.
Buccleuch Street, and St. Patrick Square; though
some mere projected, the sites were nearly alI
fields and orchards. The old Statistical Account
says that Ross Park was purchased for ;GI,ZOO,
and that the ground-rents of the square yield
now (i.e., in 1793) above LI,OOO sterling per
annum to the proprietor.
James Brown, architect, who built Brown Square,
having feued from the city of Edinburgh the lands
of Ross Park, built thereon most of the houses of
the h?ew Square, which measures 220 yards by
150, and is said to have named it, not for the king,
but Brown?s elder brother George, who was the
Laud of Lindsaylands and Elliestown. It speedily
became a more popular place of residence than
Brown Square, being farther from town, and possessing
houses that were greatly superior in style
and accommodation.
Among the early residents in the square in
1784, and prior to that year, were the Countesses
of Glasgow and Sutherland, the Ladies Rae and
Philiphaugh, Antliony, Earl of Kintore, eighth
Lord Falconer of Halkertoun, Sir John Ross
Lockhart, and the Lords Braxheld, Stonefield, and
Kennet; and in 1788, Major-General Sir Ralph
Abercrombie, who died of his wounds in Egypt
It has been recorded as an instance of Lord Braxfield?g
great nerve that during the great political
trials in 1793-4, when men?s blood was almost at
fever heat, after each day?s proceedings closed,
usually about midnight, he always walked home,
alone and unprotected, through the dark or illlighted
streets, to his house in George Square,
though he constantly commented openly upon the
conduct of the Radicals, and more than once
announced in public that ?? They wad a? be muckle
the better 0? bein? hung !
Here, too, resided in 1784 the Hon. Henry
Erskine (brother of the Earl of Buchan), the witty
advocate, who, after being presented to Dr. Johnson
by Mr. Boswell, and having made his bow in
the Parliament House, slipped a shilling into
Boswell?s hand, whispering that it was for the sight
of his English bear.
To those named, Lord Cockburn, in his ?Memorials,?
adds the Duchess of Gordon, Robert
Dundas of Amiston, Lord Chief Baron of Exchequer,
the hero of Camperdown, Lord President Blair,
Dr. John Jamieson, the Scottish lexicographer, and
says, ?a host of other distinguished people all
resided here. The old square, with its pleasant
trim-kept gardens, has still an air of antiquated
grandeur about it, and retains not a few traces of
its former dignity and seclusion.?
Aniong the documents exhibited at the Scott
