The thread about St. Patrick and the 18th century Southside houses of Cabbage and Turnip

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, so what better way to start a thread than with the below photo of Edinburgh’s St. Patrick Square in 1914 (n.b. the street names here are, and always have been, styled as St. Patrick and not St Patrick’s).

In the background of the picture, below the spire of the Buccleuch Free Church, is the original row of 18th century tenements of St. Patrick Street, for which the square is named. But why was a street in staunchly Presbyterian Edinburgh named for a Catholic saint, in deed one who is the Irish patron? Well the simple answer is it probably wasn’t. It was most likely named for local merchant and landowner Patrick Tod. This would not be the first or even the second saintly Edinburgh placename to have a strictly civic root (see also St. James’ Square, St. Ann Street etc.) Those original and now demolished tenements had been built in 1782 by William Archibald, a slater, who had acquired “five acres and a bit” of ground known as Cabbagehall from the late James Carfrae.

In the mid-18th century Cabbagehall was one of a number of feus (portions of land that had been split up from a larger one under the Scottish system of land tenure) to the south of the city that formed an early suburb outwith the confines of the ancient walls. Most of this suburb was villa houses with portions of market garden. The feuars here clearly had a practical sense of naming; other plots included Gairnshall, Huntershall, Summerhall, Orangehall and Turniphall.

Cabbagehall had been built in the garden of David Stevenson in 1734 and he lived there with his wife and daughter. He took the unusual step of conveying it to his daughter to provide her with an income from which she could maintain her father and stepmother in their dotage. The daughter – Elizabeth – was a widow but remarried a preacher called James Robertson who attempted (and failed) to run some sort of mission from Cabbagehall, pompously referring to himself as “Minister of the Gospel at the Collegehall“. In the 1780s Cabbagehall was the location of the public sale of municipal “street dung“. Those old tenements of St. Patrick Street were built on part of the Cabbagehall garden by Archibald.

The end tenement of the square, above the pend through to Buccleuch Place, was demolished in the 1970s. It is reputed to have been the final lodging place of Robert Burns during his time in the city.

There were other Cabbagehalls in the east of Scotland; at Inveresk (near Musselburgh), Peebles and also an estate in Fife near Leslie, where there was a Laird of Cabbagehall. Turniphall however may have been a unique place name. It was further east, closer to the Pleasance, and tenements were built on it in 1758 by James Carfrae. Part of the Turniphall grounds were sold in 1786. The Nicholson referred to here is from the family who were the ancient landowners, and thus gave their name to Nicolson Street, Square etc. further to the north.

Around 1777, the new road of Nicolson Street was pushed southwards through this district as a grand new road into the city and in doing so cut through the lands of Cabbagehall and Turniphall. The land to either side of the road was then progressively sub-fued to build new tenements. This planned road is shown below in Edgar’s 1765 Town Plan.

Kincaid’s Town Plan of 1784 shows that St. Patrick Square was not the original plan for this area, it had been intended to run Buccleuch Street further east to join up with Nicolson Street.

By 1804 howecwe on Ainslie’s Plan we can see the garden square has been formed and the early 19th century wing of tenements on the west and south sides are planned and shown as a dotted outline. Notice that at this stage, the road that extends Nicolson Street south is shown as “Intended” and Clerk Street does not yet exist.

If you want something actually named for St. Patrick in Edinburgh, then you need to go to St. Patrick’s Catholic Church on the Cowgate. But it wasn’t always so, it started life as an Episcopalian Chapel (the English Chapel as it was known) in 1770. By 1821 it was occupied by the Relief Church (an organisation that split off the Kirk in Fife in 1763 as the Presbytery of Relief for the “Relief of Christians oppressed in their Christian privileges”, and later the United Presbyterian Church

The Roman Catholic Church bought the chapel, with a 50% contribution by local public subscription, and it was consecrated and opened for Mass in 1856. This reflected the swelling number of Irish immigrant Catholics in the Cowgate at this time. Up until 1918, the RC Church controlled education for Catholic children in Edinburgh (and indeed in Scotland) and it was not until after this that St. Patricks’ School became a school under the control of the Edinburgh Education Authority for RC children in the Cowgate and Dumbiedykes area. Like many RC schools in the city, it had a wandering start to life, moving first to a building on St. John’s Hill formerly occupied by an Industrial School (a form of reformatory school that taught basic skills related to trades to children) before occupying part of what had been South Bridge School. Rather like the case of St. Patrick Square, the late Stuart Harris (author of the go-to reference on Edinburgh street and placenames) provides ample evidence that there is no authentic link between the place name of St. John’s Hill and any Christian saint of that name or indeed the Order of the Knights of St John!

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