Royal
Mile, Edinburgh - Canongate to Abbey Strand
The Royal Mile runs from Edinburgh Castle down to Holyrood
in five stretches:
Castlehill, Lawnmarket, High Street
(link), Canongate (here), Abbey Strand
MapClick on photos to enlarge
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Notes in
italics from Pevsner Architectural
Guides, Edinburgh by John Gifford, Colin McWilliam and David Walker
(1991), Yale University Press. |
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Stretch of the Canongate
between New Street and the old Canongate Tolbooth at the bottom. These
tenements were largely restored or rebuilt in the 1950-60s, retaining the
traditional facades. |
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Canongate Tolbooth. The
building to the left of the tower, although now part of the Tolbooth, was
originally an early 17th century tenement. The Tolbooth has served various purposes through the ages: Collecting tolls
from travellers through Canongate burgh, council chamber, police court,
prison. The tower was built in 1591, the courtroom block to the E
at the same time or soon after. This is Canongate's expression of burghal
pride, so the tower above its vaulted pend to Tolbooth Wynd has
conical-roofed bartizans at the front with qautrefoil gunloops, and a
conical spire rising from flattened broaches. ... A large clock, dated
1884, sticks out over the street on scrolled wrought-iron brackets.
Forestair and lean-to stair-turret in the angle of the courtroom block,
which is quite domestic but has a rectangular oriel at the E end, partly
balancing the tower. In the centre of the block, a large pedimented frame
... In this frame the Burgh arms. They are late C19, as is a good deal of
the rest of the courthouse block, which acquired its appearance in Robert
Morham's restoration of 1875. He provided a new roof of steeper pitch, and
a parapet, and replaced three piended dormers with four steeply pedimented
ones ... |
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No. 200 Canongate is a
replica of 1956-7 by Gordon & Dey of a harled early C17 front, with
gabled dormer heads on the second floor and a row of gabled dormers at the
attic. The central arch leads to Old Playhouse Close, the location of
the first permanent theatre in Edinburgh between 1747 and 1769.
Commemorated by the plaque at the entrance.
Huntly House, which houses the museum of Edinburgh. The name is
misleading - it was never a great town house ... By 1517 there were three
small houses side by side. They were united in 1570 ... Rubble ground
floor, corbelled-out ashlar first floor. (About
1671) the tenement was raised by two timber-framed and harled
storeys with three broad gables to the street, jettied out above the eaves
line of the existing building. ...
Through the pend on the left one enters into Bakehouse Close, showing
the rear of the building. |
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Canongate Kirk. Opened in 1691 as the
new parish church of the burgh of
Canongate. More here.
Robert Fergusson strolling past the kirk. He is buried in the kirkyard
- more here.
Panmure House in Panmure Close off the Canongate. The house is late 17th century, L-plan with
crowstepped gables. Adam Smith lived here and is buried in Canongate
kirkyard - more here. |
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Reid's Court.
Early 18th century, restored in 1958-9 as Canongate Manse. |
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White Horse Close at the bottom
of the Canongate. The Close was the arrival and departure point for the
London stage. The name comes from the horse that carried Mary Queen of
Scots to and from Holyrood Palace nearby. In Sir Walter Scott's first
novel, Waverley, The White Horse Inn was the lodgings of Bonnie Prince
Charlie's officers when they entered Edinburgh in 1745.
Of the current buildings in the close, the Pevsner guide states ... so blatantly fake that it can be acquitted of any
intention to deceive. A court built for Laurence Ord in the late C17, its
buildings focused on the inn at the N end (first
picture), was bought in 1889 by Dr Barbour and his sister, and
reconstructed by James Jerdan as working-class housing , then even more
extensively by Frank Mears & Partners in 1962. The W side is now a
very plain row of harled two-storey houses, the E side is very
self-consciously picturesque (second picture), the N end a Hollywood dream
of the C17. Even the datestone of 1623 joins in the fantasy; it used to
read 1523 but was recut c.1930 to give a more plausible date. The
advantages of harling as a cover-up for modern brickwork are nowhere
better displayed. It is actually an amazing reproduction when one
compares it with this
Painting of 1845.
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Queensberry House, at the
bottom end of the Canongate, built 1681-6. Single-storey rusticated porch
between the two wings added c.1700. It has now been incorporated into the
new Scottish Parliament building as shown here. For more on the
parliament building see separate page. |
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Abbey Strand, the last,
short bit of the Royal Mile, leading up to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Two
buildings only. The harled four-storey W one, restored by Thomas Ross in
1916, began as a late C15 or early C16 tenement of three storeys and attic
with two two-room dwellings on each floor. Each half had its own forestair
to the first floor ... and a corbelled-our stair-turret to the floors
above. After the sack of Edinburgh in 1544 the building was reconstructed
and extended N by 3.3 m, the turret stairs were removed, and a new
stair-tower serving the whole structure was put up at the back. ...
To the E ... an early-C17 L-shaped two-storey addition with three unequal
crowstepped gables to the front. The present ground floor with a large
pend arch on the r. ... is due to H.M. Office of Works, 1935. |
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To Lawnmarket and
High Street stretch of the Royal Mile
Old engravings of the Royal Mile
The
Royal Mile described in Wikipedia |
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More
of Edinburgh at Astoft |
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