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The Grassmarket Sense of Place: The hidden history of Edinburgh’s public spaces The Grassmarket “Celebrated as a place of bustle and Look out for... life” Thomas Mudie, 1848 • Part of the old city walls The Grassmarket’s origins lie with it being in a valley, which meant it was easier for livestock and carts to access rather than having to negotiate the steep slope up to the Old Town. • Inscriptions on the Bow The area was probably used as a market from the 1300’s cattle fairs, various stables and yards Well also built for the cattle to be fattened and butchered before taken to the meat market. • The Covenanters’ This ended around 1670 when the market became used more as a transit point where traders Monument would bring in their goods before unloading carts and carrying them up the West Bow into the city by barrow or porter. Most of the buildings you can see today date from the 1800’s, following a period of improve- ment in the Old Town. However, stone from older buildings was often reused. For example look at No. 74—82, which was built in the 1930’s but incorporates an Inside: earlier door frame dated 1634. The end of Captain 2 Porteous Bowfoot Hotel 2 The Bow Well The Flodden Wall 2 In 1674 the city’s got its first piped water supply, with wells The Martyrs 3 designed by the King’s Master Mason Robert Mylne. The system worked with gravity, and water flowed through A place of dubious 3 wooden pipes from a cistern higher up near the High Street. reputation... Examples of the pipes can still be seen today in the Museum of A place of entertain- 3 Edinburgh. ment... Page 2 The Grassmarket The end of Captain Porteous The Grassmarket was the scene of Edinburgh mob were incensed by what The following day Porteous was cut one of Edinburgh’s most notorious they took to be interference in their down and buried in Greyfriars kirk- riots, in September 1736. legal process, and they stormed the yard. News of the riot caused alarm in Tolbooth prison. The mob found the London, and a reward of £200 was Earlier that year two popular smug- poor captain hiding up a chimney, and offered for information. Although a glers, Wilson and Robertson, were he was dragged to the Grassmarket city carpenter called James Maxwell sentenced to death. As Wilson was where he was hung from a dyers pole. was suspected as the ringleader, no cut down from the gallows, the crowd one came forward. began to throw stones and the city guard opened fire killing 16 people, The Porteous Riots form the back- including a small boy watching the ground to one of Sir Walter Scott’s scene from a tenement window. most famous novels, ‘The Heart of Midlothian’. John Porteous, the captain of the guard, was put on trial and found guilty Today in the Museum of Edinburgh of murder, but with friends at court in you can see the drum used to summon London a reprive seemed likely. The the mob to the Tolbooth. Bowfoot Hotel On the south side of the Grassmarket Trades Hostel. By the late 1970’s it ject was carried out in 1980. Following is a building known as the Bowfoot was rundown and a regeneration pro- this second period of change the build- Hotel, which provided a place of ref- ing became known as Bowfoot House. uge for homeless people from the The building has now is now affordable 1880’s. housing owned by Hillcrest Housing This building was originally designed as Association. housing and shops, but was soon altered by architects MacGibbon & Ross in 1875 to become the Castle The Flodden Wall At the west end of the Grassmarket, where King James IV and much of the In fear of reprisal from the English the by the side of The Lot, you can still Scottish nobility were killed. existing King’s Wall was extended with see the remains of part of the Flodden further defences to the south. In fact Wall. the wall failed to provide adequate protection and succeeded only in limit- The Flodden Wall was an extension of ing the city’s development to the south the city wall, built hurriedly after the until the 17th century. disastrous Battle of Flodden (1513) The Grassmarket Page 3 The Martyrs The Grassmarket first gained a grisly Tradition says that at least one hanging reputation as a place for public hang- was unsuccessful. ings in the 1600’s. In 1724 a women called Maggie Dick- This was the time of the Covenanters, son was sentenced to hang for con- a religious group dedicated to protect cealing the death of her baby. How- their faith from interference from the ever as she was being carted away she monarchy. During what became recovered, and has been remembered known as ‘the killing time’, over a hun- ever since ‘Half-Hangit Maggie Dick- dred were executed in the Grassmar- son’. A pub is still named after her in ket. the Grassmarket today. The Duke of Rothes was quoted as The last person to hanged in the saying to one particularly difficult pris- Grassmarket was James Andrews on 4 oner, “…then e’en let him glorify God February 1784. After that date, execu- in the Grassmarket…” tions took place at the Tolbooth in the High Street. A place of dubious reputation... In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie the At the end of Kidnapped, Robert Louis merchants in their windows, the hub- Grassmarket is the setting of Sandy's Stevenson describes the scene, “It was bub and endless stir, the foul smells “first experience of a foreign country, coming near noon when I passed in by and the fine clothes, and a hundred which intimates itself by its new smells the West Kirk and the other particulars “The huge height of the and shapes and its new poor”, and Grassmarket...The too small to men- where “some boys shouted after [the] huge height of the buildings, running up to ten and tion, struck me into violet-clad company, with words that buildings, running up fifteen storeys, , the wares of a kind of stupor of the girls had not heard before, but to ten and fifteen sto- surprise…’ the merchants in their windows, rightly understood to be obscene”. reys...the wares of the the hubbub and endless stir” A place of entertainment... The Grassmarket has always been a rope fixed from the castle to a building bringing their cattle to market. place of entertainment. in the market some 200 feet below. It was here in the 1700’s that the first Pubs have always been associated with cockfights were arranged in Edinburgh. the Grassmarket, and the White Hart In 1733 it was also the location for a is one of the oldest. As well as a place spectacular feat. A traveling Italian to drink, they were taverns providing trapeze artist and his son slid down a accommodation for the drovers Edinburgh World Heritage 5 Charlotte Square The Old and the New Towns of Edinburgh World Heritage Site Edinburgh The Old and the New Towns of Edinburgh together comprise one of the EH2 4DR most beautiful cityscapes in the world, inscribed by UNESCO as a World Phone: +44 (0)131 220 7720 Edinburgh World Heritage Fax: +44 (0)131 220 7730 Heritage Site in 1995. 5 Charlotte Square E-mail: [email protected] Edinburgh Landscape EH2 4DR Edinburgh World Heritage Trust is a charitable company limited by guarantee. Edinburgh is built on a volcanic landscape of hills and valleys formed some RegisteredPhone: +44 in Scotland (0)131 No. 220195077. 7720 Scottish Charity No. SC037183 340 million years ago. Architecture The unique character of the city comes from the contrast between the Old and New Town, with each area containing many significant historic buildings. History Edinburgh has been the capital of Scotland for over 500 years, and became particularly renowned for its writers, artists, philosophers and scientists. Find out more at www.ewht.org.uk How to find it Read more… for more about the attractions and events in the Grassmarket visit www.grassmarket.net .
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