2 14 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. . [Castle Terrace.
Place, and now chiefly used as a coal dep8t.
Some of the merchants having coal offices here
are among the oldest and most extensive firms in
the city, one having been established so far back
as 1784 and having now business ramifications so
ample as to require a complete system of private
telegraphs for the transmission of orders between
their various offices and coal stores throughout
Edinburgh and the suburbs.
This station is reached from the East Princes
Street Gardens by a tunnel 3,000 feet in length,
passing under the West Church burial ground
and the foundations of several streets, and serves
as a port for the North British system at the West
End.
In its vicinity, on the north side of the way, is
a large Winter Garden at the corner between the
Glasgow Road and Coates Gardens. It was
formed in 1871, and has a southern front 130 feet
in length, with a main entrance 50 feet wide, 30
feet long, and surmounted by a dome 65 feet in
height.
A little westward of it is West Coates Established
Church, built in the later Pointed style, in
1869, with a tower and spire 130 feet in height.
It cost &7,500, and is seated for go0 persons.
The United Presbyterian Churches in Palmerston
Place (the old line of Bell's Mills Loan) and
Dalry Road were opened in 1875, and cost respectively
,f;13,000 and 'L5,ooo. The former is
an imposing edifice in the classic Italian style,
with a hexastyle portico, carrying semicircular
headed arches and flanked by towers IOO feet in
height.
On the gentle swell of the ground, about 600
yards westward of the Haymarket, amid a brilliant
urban landscape, stands Donaldson's Hospital, in
magnitude and design one of the grandest edifices
of Edinburgh, and visible from a thousand points
all round the environs to the westward, north,
and south. It sprang from a bequest of about
~210,000 originally by James Donaldson of
. Broughton Hall, a printer, at one time at the
foot of the ancient Rest Bow, who died in the
year 1830.
It was erected between the years 1842 and 1851,
after designs by W. H. Playfair, at a cost of about
~IOO,OOO, and forms a hollow quadrangle of 258
feet by 207 exteriorly, and 176 by 164 interiorly.
It is a modified variety of a somewhat ornate
Tudor style, and built of beautiful freestone. It
has four octagonal five-storeyed towers, each IZO
feet in height, in the centre of the main front,
and four square towers of four storeys each at the
corners; and most profuse, graceful, and varied
-
ornamentations on all the four fapdes, and much
in the interior.
It was speciallyvisited and much admired by
Queen Victoria in 1850, before it was quite completed,
and now maintains and ' educates poor
boys and girls. The building can accommodate
150 children of each sex, of whom a considerable
per centage are both deaf and dumb. According
to the rules of this excellent institution, those
eligible for admission are declared to be-'' I. Poor
children of the name of Donaldson or Marshall, if
appearing to the governors to be deserving. 2. Such
poor children as shall appear to be in the most destitute
circumstances and the most deserving of admission."
None are received whose parents are able
to support them. The children are clothed and
maintained in the hospital, and are taught such
useful branches of a plain education as will fit the
boys for trades and the girls for domestic service.
The age of admission is from seven to nine, and
that of leavhg the hospital fourteen years. The
Governors are the Lord Justice-General, the Lord
Clerk Register, the Lord Advocate, the Lord Provost,
the Principal of the University, the senior
minister of the Established Church, the ministers
of St. Cuthbert's and others ex-officio.
The Castle Terrace, of recent erection, occupies
the summit of a steep green bank westward of
the fortress and overhanging a portion of the old
way from the West Port to St. Cuthbert's. A
tenement at its extreme north-western corner is
entirely occupied by the Staff in Scotland. Here
are the offices of the Auxiliary Artillery, Adjutant-
General, Royal Engineers, the medical staff, and
the district Con~missariat.
Southward of this stands St. Mark's Chapel,
erected in 1835, the only Unitarian place of
worship in Edinburgh. It cost only Lz,ooo, and
is seated for 700. It has an elegant interior, and
possesses a iine organ. Previous to 1835 its congregation
met in a chapel in Young Street.
Near it, in Cambridge Street, stands the new
Gaelic Free Church, a somewhat village-like erection,
overshadowed by the great mass of the
United Presbyterian Theological Hall. The latter
was built in 1875 for the new Edinburgh or West
End Theatre, from designs by Mr. Pilkington, an
English architect, who certainly succeeded in
supplying an edifice alike elegant and comfortable.
In its fiqt condition the auditorium measured
70 feet square within the walls, and the accommodation
was as follows-pit and stalls, 1,ooo ;
dress circle and private boxes, 400; second
circle, 600; gallery, 1,000; total, 3,000. The
stage was expansive, and provided with all the
Castle Terrace.] THE UNION CANAL 215
newest mechanical appliances, including hydraulic
machinery for shifting the larger scenes. The
proscenium was 32 feet wide by 32 feet in height,
with an availabie width behind of 74 feet, expanding
backwards to 114 feet.
The lighting was achieved ?by a central sunlight
and lamps hung on the partition walls. The ventilation
was admirable, and the temperature was
regulated by steam-pipes throughout the house.
But the career of this fine edifice as a theatre
was very brief, and proved how inadequate Edinburgh
is, from the peculiar tastes and wishes of
its people, to supply audiences for more than two
or three such places of entertainment. It speedily
proved a failure, and being in the inarket was
purchased by the members of the United Presbyterian
Church, who converted it into a theological
hall, suited for an audience of 2,ooo in all.
The total cost of the building to the denomination,
including the purchase of the theatre, amounted
to ~47,000. Two flats under the street $oor are
fitted up as fireproof stores, which will cover in all
an area of 3,500 square yards.
In connection with this defunct theatre it was
proposed to have a winter garden and aquarium.
Near it the eye is arrested by a vast pile of new
buildings, fantastic and unique in design and
detail, the architect of which has certainly been
fortunate, at least, in striking out something
original, if almost indescribable, in domestic architecture.
Free St. Cuthbert?s Church is in Spittal Street,
which is named from Provost Sir James Spittal,
and is terminated by the King?s Bridge at the base
of the Castle Rock.
All this area of ground and that lying a little
to the westward have the general name of the
Castle Barns, a designation still preserved in a
little street near Port Hopetoun. A map of the
suburbs, in 1798, shows Castle Barns to be an
isolated hamlet or double row of houses on Lhe
Falkirk Road, distant about 250 yards from the
little pavilion-roofed villa still standing at the Main
Point. Maitland alleges that somewhere thereabout
an ediiice was erected for the accommodation
of the royal retinue when the king resided
in the Castle; and perhaps such may have been
the case, but the name implies its having been
the grange or farm attached to the fortress, and
this idea is confirmed by early maps, when a considerable
portion of the ground now lying on both
sides of the Lothian Road is included under the
general term.
On the plateau at the head of the latter, bordered
on the south-east by the ancient way to Fountainbridge,
stands one of the most hideous features
of Edinburgh-the Canal Basinl with its surrounding
stores and offices. 8
In 1817 an Act of Parliament was procured,
giving power to a joint stock company to cut a
a canal from Edinburgh to the Forth and Clyde
Canal at a point about four miles before the communication
of the latter with the Forth. The canal
was begun in the following year and completed in
1822. The chief objects of it were the transmission
of heavy goods and the conveyance of passengers
between the capital and Glasgow-a system long
since abandoned ; the importation to the former
of large coal supplies from places to the *estward,
and the exportation of manure from the city into
agricultural districts. The eastern termination,
calledPort Hopetoun, occasioned the rapid erect;on
of a somewhat important suburb, where before there
stood only a few scattered houses surrounded by
fields and groves of pretty trees; but the canal,
though a considerable benefit to the city in prerailway
times, has drained a great deal of money
from its shareholders.
Though opened in 182, the canal was considerably
advanced in the year preceding. In the
Week0 Journd for November 7, 1821, we read
that ?from the present state of the works, the
shortening of the days, and the probability of being
retarded by the weather, it seems scarcely possible
that the trade of this navigation can be opened up
sooner than the second month of spring, which
will be exactly four years from its commencement.
Much has been done within the last few months
on the west end of the line, while at the east end
the forming of the basin, which is now ready to
receive the water, together with the numerous
bridges necessary in the first quarter of a mile, have
required great attention. , Of the passage boats
building at the west end of Lochrin distillery, two
of which we mentioned some time ago as being
in a forward state, one is now completed ; she is
in every respect an elegant and comfortable vessel,
and is called the FZoora Mac Ivor; the second is
considerably advanced, and a third boat after the
same model as the others is commenced building.?
In the same (now defunct) periodical, for 1st
January, 1822, we learn that the RZora, ?the first
of the Union Canal Company?s passage boats, was
yesterday launched from the company?s building
yard, at the back of Gilmore Place.?
One of the best features of street architecture
that sprung up in this quarter after the formation
of the canal was Gardiner?s Crescent., with its
chapel, which was purchased from the United
Secession Congregation by the Kirk Session of St.
