The Sciennu.1 CRAIGMILLAR ASYLUM. SI
former, but he could not take it down without pur
chasing the latter also. The garden is supposed
to have extended as far back as the Dalkeith Road
before Minto Street was made.
Summerhall, in the Sciennes quarter, has long
been noted for its brewery. In the dreadful storm
of wind which visited Edinburgh in 1733, we are
told in the Suts Muguzine for that year, that the
ashes from several chimneys set some houses on
fire, among others that of Mr. Bryson the brewer
at Summerhall, and destroyed it, with zoo bolls of
grain.
Clerk Street Chapel was among the many new
churches that have sprung up in this district, where
we now find quite a cluster of them.
The foundation-stone of the former was laid in
1823 ; it was to be a chapel of ease for St. Cuthbert?s
parish, to contain 1,700 persons, and be
named ?Hope Park Chapel.? The steeple is
about 116 feet in height. Newington Free Church,
on the east side of the street, about ohe hundred and
twenty yards farther south, is a spacious building,
erected in 1843, and enlarged afterwards with a
neat Gothic front. Hope Park United Presbyterian
Church is one hundred and fifty yards south-west
of the latter, and was erected in 1867, in lieu of a
relinquished church in the Potterrow ; and Hope
Park Congregational Church was erected in 1876,
at a cost of L6,300, in the French Romanesque
style. St. Peter?s Episcopal Church, with a lofty
square spire, stands in Lutton Place, about one
hundred and forty yards south-east of Newington
Free Church.
. In No. 26 South Clerk Street is the Edinburgh
Literary Institute, built in 1870, and improved five
years subsequently. It contains a large hall for
lectures and concerts, and has a reading-room,
library, and several class-rooms. It is managed by
a president and twenty-four directors, with finance,
lecture, and library committees. The library contains
considerably over zo,ooo volumes, and in
the news and reading rooms are to be found the
whole serial literature of the day.
The Mayfield Loan, a continuation of the
Grange Loan, intersects Newington from east to
west. During the last century there were but two
small manor-houses here, known respectively as
East and West Mayfield Houses. The latter was
only swept away a few years ago, after being long
a wayside inn, when Mayfield Street was formed.
In the West Loan we find Mayfield Free Church
and Hall, in the early Gothic style, opened about
the end of 1876, and designed to become a large
cruciform edifice, with a steeple 150 feet high.
A little way south of this was the hamlet of the
Summerhall is a brewery still.
Powburn, once a favourite summer residence for
citizens. It gave the title of baronet to a Sir
James Keith in 1663; the title is now extinct.
But a hundred years afterwards we find advertised
as to let ?The Powburn House, pleasantly situated
a little from the Grangegate Toll Bar, with
coach-house and four-stalled stable,? &c (Edinburgh
Advertiser, Vol. I.)
Here has now been erected on rising ground the
West Craigmillar Asylum for Blind Females, one of
the many noble charities which do such honour to
Edinburgh. It stands amid an ornamental plot of
four acres; was founded in April, 1874, and completed
three years afterwards, at a cost of L13,ooo.
It consists of a main body and wings in a light
French style of architecture. The front elevation
is 160 feet long; the main block is three storeys
high, with a porticoed entrance, and is surmounted
by a clock-tower 80 feet in height. Each wing
has a French roof, designed in a manner to enhance
the appearance of this tower.
The reception-hall is circular, with a diameter
of I I I feet ; there are two work-rooms, each 72 feet
by 20 ; adining-hall, 115 feet long, with a roof about
24 feet high of open timber work. This noble
edifice has superseded both the asylum for blind
female adults in Nicolson Street, and that for blind
female children in Gayfield Square, and accomniodates
150 inmates.
Newington consists almost entirely of lines of
handsome villas, bordering spacious thoroughfares,
and contains the houses in which the Rev. Dr.
Thomas hlcCrie, the Rev. Dr. John Brown, and
the Rev. Dr. William Cunningham, lived and died.
House property, principally in villas, throughout
the southern suburbs eastward of the Burghmuirhead,
was erected in the few years ending 1877, to
the value of A1,358,550.
Mayfield Established Church was at firs?t only a
temporary iron erection, facing Craigmillar Park,
but in 1877 was superseded by a stone structure
which cost about L5,ooo.
The most ancient edifices that stood in the
Newington district of Edinburgh were the Chapel
of St. John the Baptist, on the eastern verge of
the Burghmuir, and the Convent of St. Katharine
of Scienna, which gave its name to the suburb now
named the Sciennes.
The former was long a solitary chaplaincy,
founded and endowed, towards the close of the
reign of James IV., by Sir John Crawford, a canon
of St. Giles?s Church ; ?? and portions of the ruins,?
says Wlson, ?are believed still to form part of
the garden wall of a hocse on the west side of
Newington, called Sciennes Hall.? There a species
52 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Sciennes.
of hermit, or chaplain, resided ; and the charter of
foundation mentions that he was to be clothed ?? in
a white garment, having on his breast a portraiture
of St. John the Baptist.?
In the ?? Inventory of Pious Donations,? under
date 2nd of March, 1511, there is found a ?charter of
confirmation of a mortification by Sir John Crawford,
one of the prebends of St. Giles?s Kirk, to a
kirk built by him at St. Giellie Grange, mortifying
thereunto 18 acres of land, with the.Quany Land
Soon after the erection of this chapel the convent
of St. Katharine was founded near it, by Janet Lady
Seton, whose husband George, third Lord Seton,
was slain at the battle of Flodden, where also fell
his brother Adam, second Earl of Bothwell, grandfather
of James, fourth Earl of Bothwell, and Duke
of Orkney.
After that fatal day she remained a widow for
forty-five years, says the ?History of the House
of Seytoun ?-for nearly half a century, according
BROADSTAIRS HOUSE, CAUSEWAYSIDE, 1880. (Fronr a Pa?ntinx ay-G. M. AiRman.)
given to him in charity by the said Burgh, with an
acre and a quarter of a particate of land in his
three acres and a half of the said Muir pertaining
to him, lying at the east side of the common
muir, betwixt the lands of John Cant on the west,
and the common muir on the east and south parts,
and the Mureburgh now built on the north.?
This solitary little chapel was intended to be a
charity for the benefit of the souls of the founder,
his kindred, the reigning sovereign, the magistrates
of Edinburgh, ?? and such others as it was usual
to include in the services for the faithful departed
in similar foundations.? The chaplain was required
to be of the foundeis name and family, and after his
death the patronage rested with the Town Council.
to the ?? Eglinton Peerage ?-and was celebrated
for her ? exalted and matronly conduct, which drew
around her, at her well-known residence at the
Sciennes, all the female branches of the nobility.?
In 1516 a notarial instrument on behalf of the
sisters and Josina Henrison at their head, refemng
to the foundation and mortification of St. John?s
Kirk, on the Burgh Muir, is preserved among the
?? Burgh Records.?
The convent was founded for Dominicans, and
amid the gross corruption that prevailed at the
Reformation, so blameless and innocent were the
lives of these ladies that they were excepted from
the general denunciation by the great satirist of the
time, Sir David Lindsay, who, in his satire of the
