Here some stone coffins, or cists, were found by
the workmen, when preparing the ground for the - -
erection of Oxford Terrace, which f&es the north,
and has a most commanding site; and in October,
1866, at the foundations of Lennox Street, which runs
southward from the terrace at an angle, four solitary
ancient graves were discovered a little below the
surface. ?They lay north and south,? says a local
annalist, ?and were lined with slabs of undressed
stone. The length of these graves was abou!
four feet, and the breadth little beyond two feet,
so that the bodies must have been buried in a
sitting posture, or compressed in some .way. This
must have been the case in the short cists or coffins
made of slabs of stone, while in the great cists,
which were about six feet long, the body lay at full
length.?
On both sides of the Water of Leith lies Stockbridge,
some 280 yards east of the Dean Bridge.
Once a spacious suburb, it is now included in the
growing northern New Town, and displays a
curious mixture of grandeur and romance, with
something of classic beauty, and, in more than
one quarter, houses of rather a mean and humble
character. One of its finest features is the double
crescent called St. Bernard?s, suggested by Sir David
Wilkie, constructed by Sir Henry Raeburn, and
adorned with the grandest Grecian Doric pillars
that are to be found in any other edifice not a
public one.
Here the Water of Leith at times flows with
considerable force and speed, especially in seasons
of rain and flood. Nicoll refers to a visitation in
1659, when ?the town of Edinburgh obtained an
additional impost upon the ale sold in its boundsit
was now a full penny a pint, so that the liquor rose
to the unheard of price of thirty-two pence Scots,
for that quantity. Yet this imposition seemed not
to thrive,? he continues superstitiously, ? for at the
same instant, God frae the heavens declared His
anger by sending thunder and unheard-of tempests,
storms, and inundations of water, whilk destroyed
their common mills, dams, and warks, to the toun?s
great charges and expenses. Eleven mills belonging
to Edinburgh, and five belonging to Heriot?s Hospital,
all upon the Water of Leith, were destroyed on
this occasion, with their dams, water-gangs, timber
and stone-warks, the haill wheels of their mills,
timber-graith, and haill other warks.?
In 1794-5 there was a ?spate? in the river,
when the water rose so high that access to certain
houses in Haugh Street was entirely cut off, and a
mamage party-said to be that of the parents of
David Roberts, R.A.-was nearly swept away. In
1821 a coachman with his horse was carried down
the stream, and drowned near the gate of Inverleith ;
and in 1832 the stream flooded all the low-lying
land about Stockbridge, and did very considerable
damage.
This part of the town annot boast of great
antiquity, for we do not find it mentioned by
Nicoll in the instance of the Divine wrath being
excited by the impost on ale, or in the description
of Edinburgh preserved in the Advocates? Library,
and supposed to have been written between 1642
and 1651, and which refers to many houses and
hamlets on the banks of the Water of Leith,
The steep old Kirk Loan, that led, between
hedgerows, to St. Cuthbert?s, is now designated
Church Lane; where it passed the grounds of
Drumsheugh it was bordered by a deep ditch. A
village had begun to spring up here towards the
end of the seventeenth century, and by the year
1742, says a pamphlet by Mr. C. Hill, the total
population amounted to 574 persons. Before the
city extended over the arable lands now occupied
by the New Town, the village would be deemed as
somewhat remote from the old city, and the road
that led to it, down by where the Royal Circus
stands now, was steep, bordered by hawthorn
hedges, and known as ?Stockbrig Brae.?
It is extremely probable that the name originated
in the circumstance of the first bridge having been
built of wood, for which the old Saxon word was
sfoke; and a view that has been preserved of it,
drawn in 1760, represents it as a structure of beams
and pales, situated a little way above where the
present bridge stands.
In former days, the latter-like that at Canonmills-
was steep and narrow, but by raising up
the banks on both sides the steepness was removed,
and it was widened to double its original breadth.
The bridge farther up the stream, at Mackenzie
Place, was built for the accommodation of the
feuars of St. Bernard?s grounds ; and between these
two a wooden foot-bridge at one time existed, for
the convenience of the residents in Anne Street.
The piers of it are still remaining.
St. Bernard?s, originally a portion of the old
Dean estate, was acquired by Mr. Walter ROSS,
W.S., whose house, a large, irregular, three-storeyed
edifice, stood on the ground now occupied by the
east side of Carlton Street; and this was the
house afterwards obtained by Sir Henry Raeburn,
and in which he died. Mr. Ross was a man of
antiquarian taste, and this led him to collect many
of the sculptured stones from old houses then in
the process of demolition in the city, and some
of these he built into the house. In front of one
projection he built a fine Gothic window, and
