128 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Restalrig,
Baron Norton was remarkable for his constant
attention to all religious duties. Throughout his long
life not a Sunday passed in which he was prevented
from attending the service of the Scottish Episcopal
Church, and so inviolable was his regard to truth,
that no argument could ever prevail upon him to
deviate from the performance of a promise, though
obtained contrary to his interest and by artful representations
imperfectly founded.
He died at Abbeyhill in 1820, after officiating as
a Baron of Exchequer for forty-four years. His remains
were taken to England and deposited in the
family vault at Wonersh, near Guildford, in Surrey.
On the death of his elder brother William, without
heirs in 1822, his son Fletcher Norton succeeded as
third Lord Grantley.
It is from him that the three adjacent streets at
the delta of the Regent and London Roads take
their names.
In this quarter lie Comely Green and Comely
Gardens. During the middle of the last century,
the latter would seem to have been a species of
lively Tivoli Gardens for the lower classes in Edinburgh,
though Andrew Gibb, the proprietor thereof,
addresses his advertisement to ? gentlemen and
ladies,? in the Chrant of September 1761.
Therein he announces that he intends U to give
up Comely Gardens in a few weeks, and hopes
they will favour his undertaking and encourage him
to the last. As the ball nights happened to be
rainy these three weeks past he is to keep the
gardens open every day for this season, that gentlemen
and ladies may have the benefit of a walk
there upon paying zd to the doorkeeper for keeping
the walk in order, and may have tea, coffee,
or fruit any night of the ball nights ; and hereby
takes this opportunity of returning his hearty thanks
to the noblemen, gentlemen, and ladies, who have
done him the honour to favour him with their company,
and begs the continuance of their favour, as
the undertaking has been accompanied with great
expense. Saturday night is intended to be the last
public one of this season.?
A subsequent advertisement announces for sale,
?the enclosed grounds of Comely Gardens, together
with the large house then commonly called
the Green House, and tlie office, houses, &c., on
the east side of the road leading to Jock?s Lodge.?
Adjoining the new abbey church, at the end of
a newly-built cuZ-de-sac, is one of those great schools
built by the Edinburgh School Board, near Norton
Place.
In architectural
design it corresponds with the numerous Board
Schools erected elsewhere in the city. Including
For the site Az,ooo was paid.
fittings, the edifice cost ,&7,700, Extending across
the width of the building, on both flats, are two
great halls, with four class-rooms attached. The
infants are accommodated down-stairs, the juveniles
above.
On the ground flat is a large sewing-room All
the class-rooms are lofty and well ventilated. At
the back are playgrounds, partly covered, for the
use of the pupils, whose average number is 540.
The long thoroughfare which runs northward from
this quarter, named the Easter Road, was long the
chief access to the city from Leith j the only other,
until the formation of the Walk, being the Western
or Bonnington Road.
On the east side of it are the vast premises built
in 1878 by the Messrs. W. and A. K. Johnston for
business purposes, as engravers, printers, and pub
lishers, and a little to the north of these are the
recently-built barracks for the permanent use of
the City Militia, or ?Duke of Edinburgh?s Own
Edinburgh Artillery,? consisting of six batteries,
having twenty officers, including the Prince.
Passing an old mansion, named the Drum, in the
grounds of which were dug up two very fine claymores,
now possessed by the proprietor, Mr. Smith-
Sligo of Inzievar, we find a place on the west side
of the way that is mentioned more than once in
Scottish history, the Quarry Holes.
In 1605, Sir Janies Elphinstone, first Lord
Balmerino, became proprietor of the lands of
Quarry Holes after the ruin of Logan of Restalng.
The Upper Quarry Holes were situated on the
declivity of the Calton Hill, at the head of the
Easter Road, and allusion is made to them in some
trials for witchcraft in the reign of James VI.
At the foot of this road a new Free Church for
South Leith was erected in 1881, and during the
excavations four humad skeletons were discoveredthose
of the victims of war or a plague.
Eashvard of this, cut off on the south by the line
of the North British Railway, and partially by the
water of Lochend on the west, lies the still secluded
village of Restalrig, which, though in the immediate
vicinity of the city, seems, somehow, to have
fallen so completely out of sight, that a vast portion
of the inhabitants appear scarcely to be aware
of its existence ; yet it teems with antiquarian and
historical memories, and possesses an example of
ecclesiastical architecture the complete restoration
of which has been the desire of many generations
of men of taste, and in favour of which the late
David Laing wrote strongly-the ancient church
of St. Triduana.
But long before the latter was erected Restalrig
was chiefly known from its famous old well.
