88 OLD AND NEW
Street; and till 1856 the annual sittings of the Free
Assembly were held in it.
Here, too, in 1847, it witnessed the constituting
of the Synods of the Secession and Relief Churches
into the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church
of Scotland.
Old Canonmills House, which faced Fettes Row,
has been removed, and on its site was erected,
in 1880-1, a handsome United Presbyterian Church
within a crescent.
In the month of October, 1879, there was laid
at Bellevue Crescent, by the Lord Provost (Sir
Thomas Boyd), in presence of a vast concourse
of people, the foundation stone of a handsome
German church-the first of its kind in Scotlandfor
the congregation of Hem Blumenreich, which
for a number of years preceding had been wont to
meet in the Queen Street Hall. The Provost
was presented with a silver trowel wherewith to
lay the stone. Tie cost was estimated at &2,600.
The building was designed by Mr. Wemyss,
architect, Leith, in the Pointed Gothic style, for
350 sitters.
Where now Claremont Terrace andBellevueStreet
zre erected in Broughton Park, there existed,
EDINBURGH. [Canonmills.
between 1840 and 1867, the Zoological Gardens
(a small imitation of the old Vauxhall Gardens in
London), where the storming of Lucknow and other
such scenes of the Indian mutiny used to be nightly
represented, the combatants being parties of soldiers
from the Castle, the fortifications and so forth
being illuminated transparencies. Unfortunately or
otherwise the gardens proved a failure. Among
the last animals here were two magnificent tigers,
sent from India by the then Governor-General, the
?Marquis of Dalhousie, and afterwards, we believe,
transmitted to the Zoological Gardens in London.
Here, too, was Wood?s Victoria Hall, a large
timber-built edifice for musical entertainments,
which was open till about 1857.
Eastward of old Broughton Hall here, and bordering
on the old Bonnington Road, are various little
properties and quaint little mansion-houses, such
as Powderhall, Redbraes, Stewartfield, Bonnington
House, and Pilrig, some of them situated where
the Leith winds under wooded banks and past little
nooks that are almost sylvan still-and each of
these has. its own little history or traditions.
Powderhall, down in a dell, latterly the property
of Colonel Macdonald, in 1761 was the residence
