OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Craigmillar.
-- 58
competition, the first prize for the chapel, &c., was
awarded to James Grant, Hope Park End.
Skirting the cemetery on the west, the Powburn
here tums south, and running under Cameron
Bridge, after a bend, turns acutely north, and
flows through the grounds of Prestonfield towards
Duddingston Loch.
Out of his lands of Cameron, Sir Simon Preston
of Craigmillar, in 1474, gave an annual rent of
ten marks to a chaplain in the church of Musselburgh.
Craigmillar Park and Craigmillar Road take
their name from the adjacent ruined castle ; and at
Bridge-end, at the base of the slope on which it
stands, James V. had a hunting-lodge and chapel,
some traces of which still exist in the form of a
stable.
On the summit of an eminence, visible from the
whole surrounding country-the crazg-moiZwd of
antiquity (the high bare rock, no doubt, it once was)
-stands the venerable Castle of Craigmillar, with a
history nearly as long as that of Holyrood, and
which is inseparably connected with that of Edinburgh,
having its silent records of royalty and
rank-its imperishable memories of much that has
perished for ever.
The hill on which it stands, in view of tile
encroaching city-which ? bids fair some day to
surround it-is richly planted with young wood ;
but in the immediate vicinity of the ruin some of
the old ancestral trees remain, where they have
braved the storms of centuries. Craigmillar is
remarkable as being the only family mansion in
Scotland systematically built on the principles
of fortification in use during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. In the centre tower, the square
donjon keep is of the earliest age of baronial architecture,
built we know not when, or by whom, and
surrounded now by an external wall, high and strong,
enclosing a considerable area, with round flanking
towers about sixty feet apart in front, to protect the
curtains between-all raised in. those ages of strife
and bloodshed when our Scottish nobles-
?Carved at the meal with gloves of steel,
And drank aeir wine through the helmet barredr?
Its lofty and stately vaulted hall measures
thirty-six feet long by twenty-two feet in breadth,
with a noble fireplace eleven feet wide, and on the
lower portions of it some remnants of old paintings
may be traced, and on the stone slab of one 01
the windows a diagram for playing an old knightly
game called ?Troy.? There are below it several
gloomy dungeons, in one of which John Pinkerton,
Advocate, and Mr. Irvine, W.S., discovered in
1813 a human skeleton, built into the wall upright.
What dark secrets the old walls of this castle could
tell, had their stones tongues ! for an old, old
house it is, full of thrilling historical and warlike
memories. Besides the keep and the older towers,
there is within the walls a structure of more modern
sppearance, built in the seventeenth century. This
is towards the west, where a line of six handsome
gableted dormer windows on each side of a projecting
chimney has almost entirely disappeared ;
one bore the date MDC. Here a stair led to the
castle gardens, in which can be traced a large
pond in the form of a p, the initial letter of the
old proprietor?s name. Here, says Balfour, in
I 509, ?? there were two scorpions found, one dead,
the other alive.?
There are the dilapidated remains of a chapel,
measuring thirty feet by twenty feet, with a large
square and handsomely-mullioned window, and a
mutilated font. It was built by Sir +John Gilmour,
who had influence enough to obtain a special
?? indulgence ? therefor from King James VII. It
is a stable now.
?? On the boundary wall,? says Sir Walter Scott,
?may be seen the arms of Cockburn of Ormiston,
Congalton of Congalton, Mowbray of Barnbougle,
and Otterbum of Redford, allies of the Prestons
of Craigmillar. In one corner of the court, over
a portal arch, are the arms of the family: three
unicorns? heads coupid, with a cheese-press and
barrel, or tun-a wretched rebus, to express their
name of Preston.?
This sculptured fragment bears the date 1510.
The Prestons of Craigmillar carried their shield
above the gate, in the fashion called by the Italians
smdopmdente, which is deemed more honourable
than those carried square, according to Rosehaugh?s
? Science of Heraldry.?
On the south the castle is built on a perpendicular
rock. Round the exterior walls was
a deep moat, and one of the advanced round
towers-the Dovecot-has loopholes for arrows
or musketry.
The earliest possessor of whom we have record
is ?Henry de Craigmillar,? or William Fitz-
Henry, of whom there is extant a charter of gift
of a certain toft of land in Craigmillar, near the
church of Liberton, to the monastery of Dunfermline,
in I z I 2, during the reign of King Alexander 11.
The nearer we conie to the epoch of the long and
glorious War of Independence, the more generally
do we find the lands in the south of Scotland in
the hands of Scoto-Nbrman settlers. John de
Capella was Lord of Craigmillar, from whose
family the estate passed into the hands of Simon
Preston, in 1374, he receiving a charter, under
