The thread about the Third Day of Christmas; an Edinburgh French Connection

This thread was originally written and published in December 2019.

This post in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas is preceded by a thread about The Lochend Dovecot.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; Three (Little) French Hens. This refers to Little France, a charmingly named area to the south of the city where one will now find the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. As a place name it is recorded from 1655 onwards and the popular convention is that its origin comes from the French retinue surrounding Mary Queen of Scots at nearby Craigmillar Castle. However, as early as 1786 we are cautioned about this tale, in “An Account of the Parish Of Liberton in Mid-Lothian”, by the parish minister, Rev. Thomas Whyte. Stuart Harris, author of The Place Names of Edinburgh, describes the evidence for it as “thin” and “circumstantial“. The Mary Queen of Scots myth here was popularised by an ancient tree, shown on Ordnance Survey maps as Queen Mary’s Tree, a sycamore said to have been planted by her here in 1561. Given she only returned to Scotland in August 1561, it is perhaps unlikely she found the time to plant a tree this soon.

A 1928 newspaper photograph of “Queen Mary’s Tree”

In 1735, the Caledonian Mercury advertised the Lands of Little France as being for lease, paying a yearly rent of £432 12/- in old Scottish money and that there was a “good and sufficient” farmhouse and cottages here. In William Roy’s c. 1755 “Great Map” of Lowland Scotland, he records this place as the French Mills. This gives a hint at a more likely origin for the placename; it may be there was at some point a community of French cloth millers here working a mill powered by the Burdiehouse Burn. Indeed, the modern street name here is Little France Mills.

“Little France Mills with the ERI behind”. The bow in the wall behind the red sign is where Queen Mary’s Tree once stood.

By 1795 the farm was again for let, and is described as extending to 27 acres and 12 falls. An 1825 sketch by Daniel Somerville entitled “Little France near Craigmillar” shows a row of cottages and a building that may be a drying house of some description. In the foreground we see the mill pond that is recorded on Ordnance Survey maps of this time. By the 1880s, maps show that the mill pond here had been drained and a more substantial farm occupies the spot.

Little France, by Daniel Somerville, 1825. © Edinburgh City Libraries

Little France does have a real claim to fame beyond improbable associations with Mary Queen of Scots; it was the terminus of the first railway to serve the city; the Edmonstone Waggonway. It was not the first railway in the Lothians however by some stretch; as early as 1722 a waggonway had run between pits around Tranent to Cockenzie and Port Seton.

The Edmonstone Waggonway was built by Alexander Laing, tacksman* of the Newton estate and colliery to Lt. Col. John Wauchope, landowner of the Edmonstone and Niddrie Marischal estates. It was built across Wauchope’s land to move coal from the pit at Old Millerhill to a depot at Little France. While this railway did not enter the boundary of the city itself, it was built explicitly to serve the city; cutting the cartage distance to it in half, and therefore the overall price of coal. The consulting engineer was Robert Stevenson, who proposed both a completely level line to a terminus at The Wisp or a gentle 1/1000 incline to Little France. Laing chose the latter option, on a marginally different alignment. It likely used wrought iron “edge-rails” which were favoured by Stevenson at the time. The waggons were horse-drawn, and could carry between 8 and 11 tons of coal.

* a tacksman was a senior class of tenant, who leased a “tack” of land from the feudal superior (Wauchope in this case), and had rights of sub-leasing it, at the same time as acting as a form of agent for the superior.

A Waggonway – at Tanfield on Tyneside. The horse provided the means to move the waggon on the level or uphill. Going downhill it was tethered at the rear and the waggonman would control the speed of descent using the large wooden brake lever.

The line was announced to be open for business in August 1818, not much is known about its operation however as it only placed this single advert in the newspapers. Alexander Laing of Newton died in his home on May 12th 1825, and the tack of Newton, its colliery and the Waggonway were taken up by Messrs. Alexander & Mowbary Stenhouse of Whitehill.

Caledonian Mercury, August 20th 1818

The Waggonway was soon threatened by the coming of the Edinburgh & Dalkeith Railway, to bring Midlothian coal more directly into the city at St. Leonards. Its 1825 Parliamentary Bill failed, but it succeeded in 1826. Although Wauchope had been an objector to the 1825 bill and the Stenhouses initially acted likewise in 1826, they eventually came to an agreement with the railway whereby it would make use of some of the trackbed of the Edmonstone Waggonway and lay a connection to the Stenhouse’s pits.

Trace of the route of the Edmonstone Waggonway (pink) from Old Millerhill to Little France. The later alignment of the Edinburgh & Dalkeith Railway – some of which is still in use by the Borders Railway – is in yellow.

In December 1833 the Edinburgh & Dalkeith advertised that Edmonstone Coal was now for sale at the St. Leonard’s depot, direct from the pit head. Some of the Edmonstone trackbed was later re-used in the 1890s by the Niddrie Coal Company, who laid a tramway to the old depot at Little France from their No. 14 and No. 15 pits sunk around The Wisp area. For most of the 20th Century, Little France was an entirely unremarkable place on the outskirts of the city, most notable for its quaint name. All that changed in 1998 when it was announced that the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh would relocated to a greenfield site here, away from Lauriston Place in the city centre. It opened in 2003.

The Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas continues with a thread about Burdiehouse.

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The thread about a Christmas-themed A to Z of Edinburgh and Leith place names

For no particular reason other than the time of year, let’s take an A to Z look into some of the street and place names of Edinburgh and Leith and see what festive or seasonal connections we might find.

A Very Merry Xmas, a Christmas card featuring the spire of St. Giles High Kirk and a stylised Old Town roofscape c. 1900 © Edinburgh City Libraries

A is for Albert Street. This street in Leith was named for the Prince Consort, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, around 1870 to commemorate his death in 1861. Albert is credited with introducing the first Christmas trees to Britain (he didn’t apparently it was Queen Charlotte – of Mecklenburg-Strelitz – in 1800)

Albert Street, off Leith Walk

B is for Bethlehem Way. This is a rather insipid development of modern flats in the Lochend area of the city, built on the site of the old Hawkhill Quarry. I’m afraid I cannot offer an explanation as to why this name was picked – this area has no biblical or Middle Eastern connection that I know of.

Bethlehem Way

B is for Bell’s. There are a number of Bell place names in the city, but I have picked Bell’s Brae, that charmingly steep street that connects Queensferry Street to the Water of Leith Village (which you might call Dean Village). At one time this was in the parish of the West Kirk so had to be climbed each week to attend church, so this was known as the Kirk Brae. It was named Bell’s after the millers of that name further upstream at Bell’s Mill.

Bell’s Brae

C is for Chestnut Street. This is named for a rock just off of Granton’s western breakwater and for a street name is rather odd as it was first named as late as 1985, before disappearing again when the industrial area of Granton docks was cleared. It was then being re-used in a street nearby within the last few years for new build housing. It is named for the rock of that name in the Forth.

Chestnut rock marked on a coastal chart. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

D is for Drum. As any parent knows, the worst gift you can ever receive for your small child is a drum. From the Gaelic Druim meaning literally “back”; it describes a ridge or raised ground. See also The Drum in Gilmerton, Drumbrae in Corstorphine, etc. The Drum in Leith is not that obvious now that it has been built on, but is the higher ground above Lochend Loch and was once a house and market garden of that name here, it was once the district name and is what the Hibernian F.C. ground was called before it was named Easter Road.

OS 1893 Town Plan, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

E is for Elf Loch. One of the sometimes overlooked bodies of water in the city boundary. Also called the Diedman’s Pool, this more festive name is possibly from the Gaelic ailbhinn or British elfin, meaning a rocky precipice, of which there are many nearby . An ancient, natural water feature it’s easily mistaken for a water obstacle on the golf course which surrounds it.

Elf Loch, cc-by-SA Richard Webb

F is for Fir Hill. The suburb of Firrhill or Firr Hill is a mid-19th century mapmaker’s corruption of Fir Hill, in reference to the festive trees that grew there once upon a time. The school of this name features a fir tree on its badge and has the Gaelic motto Air Carraig, or “on the rock”.

“Fir Hill”. OS 6 inch survey, 1855. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

G is For Guse Dub. Guse is the old Scots word for a Goose, and the Dub referred to a pond and spring where geese were once raised. This has long been the name of a little corner of Causewayside, where it meets the Crosscauseway.

Guse Dub and Buccleuch Street. CC-by-NC Leo Reynolds

H is for Holly and I is for Ivy, two streets in the Merchiston and Shandon “colonies” houses built by the Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company, who often used the names of trees and flowers for their terraces of high-quality model workers houses.

OS 1893 Town Plan, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

J is for St. Joseph’s, the name of a Catholic Church and Primary school in the Broomhouse area of the city. It was one of the last R.C. parishes in Edinburgh to be formed, to serve the expanding post-war population in the council housing estates in the west of the city.

St. Joseph’s RC Church, CC-by-SA 4.0 Walker287

K is for the King’s Stables. Now the name of the road which connects Lothian Road to the Grassmarket, it was here in 1335 that Edward III of England’s occupying garrison built a royal stables for the King’s cavalry horses. As the centre of Royal power in the city migrated to Holyrood in the 16th century, the stables fell out of use and were sold in 1527. The name stuck though, and it has been as such ever since.

Castle from the King’s Stables Roads, unknown photographer and date. Cc-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

L is for Lamb’s House. OK, perhaps a bit contrived but I was struggling on this one and I’m pretty sure the shepherds brought at least one lamb with them to the stable in Bethlehem. Lamb’s House, named for the merchant and shipowner Andrew Lamb, is a 17th century house in Leith and one of that Port’s oldest buildings. It was sold by the National Trust for Scotland and restored in 2012.

The restored Lamb’s House, CC-by-SA 2.0 Stephen Craven

M is for Mary. There are lots of Mary- place names in Edinburgh and more than a few churches and cathedral’s dedicated to her as a Saint. There are two Maryfields in Edinburgh. One was an old 1840s house at the head of Easter Road, giving its name to the area, and a current street and colony row in Abbeyhill. These fancy -field names after female relatives, were common. e.g. Annfield, Elizafield. Jessfield.

OS 1893 Town Plan, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

N is for St. Nicholas. If we go back to pre-reformation times, St. Nicholas was the chapel and burial ground of North Leith (although not its parish church). It was occupied by Cromwell’s Protectorate army after the Scottish Covenanters’ defeat at Dunbar in 1650, later being swept away when his Citadel was built in 1655. The only image I know if it is in the corner of the “Petworth House Map” of the Siege of Leith, when it was fortified as a strong point (note the trench around it and the cannons).

St Nicholas’ Chapel, from the 1560 “Petworth House Map” of the Siege of Leith. PHA 4640, Reproduced by the kind permission of Lord Egremont and with acknowledgements to the County Archivist, West Sussex Record Office

O is for Oxford Street, both London’s centre of festive shopping and a short street in Newington. Named for Oxford Park which was here beforehand, the reason behind that is long lost to memory and time.

Oxford Street

P is for Perdrixknowe. The house of this name was built as Waverley House by the fountain pen magnate Duncan Cameron, but reverted to its old area name of Perdrixknowe (Partridge Hill) when converted into sheltered housing in the 1980s.

Perdrixknowe, once Waverley House

Q is for Quality Street. Chocolates anyone? There were once two Quality Streets; one in Leith and one in Blackhall. Usually the duplicate streets in Leith and Edinburgh had one renamed to avoid postal confusion, in this case it was Leith that changed, to Maritime Street, which was ironic as the one in Blackhall was most likely named after it about 150 years later! It was possibly named after a fashionable property in London at the time.

OS Town Plan, 1849, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

R is for Red (as in Rudolph the Reindeer). There’s lots of Edinburgh place names with “Red” in them. Redford, Redbraes, Redheughs, etc. Redhall is one of the longest established, being recorded in the 13th century and referring to a hall house built out of the local reddish sandstone from the Redhall quarry. It was later fortified and eventually referred to as a castle. It was reduced by Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army before the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 and fell into disrepair. George Inglis of Auchendinny later built a mansion house on the estate.

Redhall House. CC-BY-SA Anne Burgess

S is for Sleigh Drive, named – along with a number of other streets in the Lochend council housing estate – after Sir William Lowrie Sleigh, DL, LLD, JP, Lord Provost of Edinburgh (1923–1926). The Corporation had a bit of a habit of naming their new housing schemes after recent Lord Provosts at this time (see also Chesser, Hutchison, Stevenson and Whitson). Sleigh made his name and money in the bicycle trade with a partner – Ross – trading under the name Rossleigh. they later moved into the motor and chauffeuring trade and are still going in the latter business.

Sir W. L. Sleigh by Cowan Dobson, © Edinburgh Museums and Galleries

T is for The East Way. How else did the Three Wise Men get where they were going? The East Way is a named footpath in the pioneering 1919 council housing development of Northfield which was laid out on Garden City principles with concentric rings of streets connected by footpaths. The others are named The North Way and The High Way.

The East Way, Northfield

U is for Upper Bow. Bow (pronounced Bough, traditionally, but Bow these days) was an old Scots term for an arched gateway, and before the construction of the West Port the West Bow was the western entrance into the city. The street was an awkward, steep dog-leg, the upper part of which was the Upper Bow, the top being the Bowhead where in antiquity there was a tron or public weigh house in the centre of the Lawnmarket. When George IV Bridge was built in the 1830s, the West Bow was redirected to connect to it, leaving the Upper Bow as a little stub, connected to it by a public stairway.

V is for Victoria Street. It is the Victorians who are credited with popularising the celebration of Christmas in the UK after all, and instituting many of the British traditions associated with it. Conveniently, this is what the West Bow was renamed to when it was diverted to connect to George IV bridge, to commemorate the recent accession of Queen Victoria. It is one of Edinburgh’s most picture postcard little streets, but is usually covered in cars despite recent attempts to make it pedestrianised.

Victoria Street. CC-by-SA 3.0 Daniel Kraft

W is for Whisky Row. Now renamed Elbe Street to reflect Leith’s North Sea trade with Hamburg on that river, it was once an address of numerous wine and spirits merchants in the Port. Cheers! Slàinte is Nollaig Cridheil!

Ainslie’s Town Plan of 1804. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

X is for Nothing. What naughty children get in their stockings – but mainly as there are no X- placenames in Edinburgh or Leith.

Y is for Yool. Yool’s place was an old street in Portobello. Thomas Yool or Yoole set up the pottery on the site with his nephew, Thomas Rathbone and a business partner John Thomas, and gave his name to a short street. Pottery was the once prosperous industry of the town, built as it was by claypits to house the workers of the brick and later pottery industries. After Yool’s death the business continued as T. Rathbone & Co., by Rathbone’s son – John – before being bought in 1839 by new owners.

OS 1944 Town Plan. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Z is for Nothing, there’s only one Z- placename in Edinburgh and that’s named after Zetland, the traditional county name for the Shetland Islands.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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The thread about Bread Street and whether its name has anything to do with bread or baking

This thread was originally written and published in October 2021.

In October 2021, a certain celebrity chef opened a high-end chain restaurant in Edinburgh called “Bread Street”. Confusingly, it’s on St. Andrew Square, and nowhere near Edinburgh’s Bread Street.

Bread Street, St. Andrew Square. Picture by Tom Hogg (@EdinJag) via Twitter

The real Bread Street is on the other side of the city centre, between the West Port and Fountainbridge. But why was it called Bread Street? Let’s see if we can find out more. But first let’s understand some of the history of the street and the area… The West Port was the old western gateway to the city of Edinburgh and lends its name to the current road here, the principal route into the city from the west and southwest before the middle of the 18th century. On either side of the road lay the small burgh of Wester Portsburgh – no prizes for guessing how it got its name! This settlement was an partially independent jurisdiction which grew up right outside the city walls.

Looking down the West Port towards Edinburgh’s Grassmarket in 1887 by Robert Diaz. The spire is probably that of the Chalmer’s Territorial Free Church on the corner of Lady Lawson Street. © Edinburgh City Libraries

Looking at a map of the early 19th century we can see the “Three Great Roads” into the city; from Falkirk, Stirling and Linlithgow in yellow, known as Orchardfield; from Lanark, Glasgow and Mid Calder in Green, Fountainbridge; and from Penicuik, Peebles and Biggar in Blue, Cowfeeder Row. In Orange is the high street of Portsburgh and in pink is the West Port itself, where the gate once stood.

John Ainslie’s Town Plan of 1804, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

It is Orchardfield that would become Bread Street, but not until 1824, when it begins to be mentioned in newspapers. The old name is one of some antiquity, recorded as far back as a charter of King David I in 1120 where it is referred to as the King’s Garden. It’s a fairly simple etymology, when taken with the nearby King’s Barns, these were Royal orchards and market gardens for Edinburgh Castle, and barns for the storage of produce. A map of 1784 by Alexander Kincaid shows that the although there were a buildings lining these roads at the end of the 18th century, the areas was still largely pastoral in character, covered in orchards, fields and market gardens. Ainslie’s map of 1804, as seen above, again shows much of the land remains undeveloped. But by now the city is beginning to creep more visibly westwards along the roads..

“Edinburgh Castle from the South West”, early 19th century, Patrick Nasmyth. This view is taken from the area known as Orchardfield, which was a literal name for a portion of orchard land long linked to the Castle. This scene is now occupied by Bread Street. From Edinburgh University Art Collection, EU0974, © 2020 University of Edinburgh.

The town plans from 1804 to 1831 show a range of development proposals for this area. This latter map, by John Wood, shows that Bread Street has now acquired its name and a blocks of new tenements have been completed (in grey shading) along Lothian Road and the south side of Bread Street, and further blocks are planned (red shading). This plan would never be fully realised; the buildings along Lothian Road were completed, the space for “Brunswick Place” was left, but the public square never really materialised, and only the block between Grindlay Street, Bread Street and Lothian Road would be completed, and to a different and less formal layout.

John Wood’s Town Plan of 1831. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

By the time of the first detailed Ordnance Survey town plan, in 1849, Bread Street is formed more or less as it is to this day, although to its eastern end it is called Orchardfield Street – so we can suppose that whatever Bread Street is named for is centred around its western end. Note too that the individual blocks of Lothian Road still have their earlier names, the part here being Downie Place; the Road referred to the whole length, a common Edinburgh practice.

1849 Ordnance Survey Town Plan. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

But why Bread Street? Well, there is perhaps a clue in the name of the confluence of the “Three Great Roads” at Portsburgh, an area known traditionally as the Main Point; or to a different sort of person (invariably a tourist) as the pubic triangle (on account of the triangular portion of land, aptly called a gushet in Scots, and the sort of entertainment offered at the bars on the corers of the street here).

The Main Point, now the Burke & Hare strip bar.

You see, in the very olden days, Main was the name given to the best bread (that’s Main, not Plain breid!). This is from the French Paindemain, which in Scots became Maine.

It is … ordanit that na baxter baik na mayne breid to sell fra hine furthwart, saiffing allenarly at Witsounday1

Edinburgh Burgh Records, 1443

English – It is ordained that no baker bakes any main bread to sell from henceforth, except only at Whitsunda) ↩︎

Was this an area where bread was once baked? It’s a nice idea – although we have no specific record that this is the case. It would not have been where the city of Edinburgh baked its bread, given it was outside the city walls and therefore the restrictions of its trades incorporations. The area name is recorded in a post-office directory of 1775, and by the end of the 18th century a baker was established here and apparently too a “bread society”. It may be all to convenient however, as I think by this time the word main for the best bread had fallen out of favour for the best part of a century and had been replaced by the concepts of plain and fancy bread to distinguish between cheaper and more expensive loafs.

Whether or not the bread theory holds any weight, it should be noted that the Main Point was the name of the building, not a reference to it being at the point of the two gushets (Gushet. n. Scots. “A triangular piece of land, esp. one lying between two adjacent properties“) formed by Bread Street, East Fountainbridge and Cowfeeder Row. This spot was long the location of a toll house known as the Tupenny Custom. This toll has nothing to do with the local placename of Tollcross. It also has nothing to do with even a cross or a cross roads. It’s an 18th century corruption of the much older name Tollcors, a Brythonic toponym meaning a boggy hollow. It’s written as Tolcors in the 15th century and Towcroce and Tolcroce in the 16th.

The Main Point in 1972, a photograph by S. G. Jackman. © Edinburgh City Libraries

Anyway even if it is fanciful that Bread Street and the Main Point are named after baking, it’s somewhat appropriate, as much of the block on the south side of Bread Street would from the late 19th century onwards, and well into the 20th, be acquired by and rebuilt for the St. Cuthbert’s Cooperative Society as a showpiece department store.

1944 Ordnance Survey Town Plan, showing the extent of St. Cuthberts at Bread Street. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Fountainbridge is the spiritual home of the St. Cuthbert’s, named for the parish to the west of the city in which it was founded. Its original store was here, and later its administrative offices, its main bakery, its dairy, its transport department and its workshops. The litmus test of a real Edinburgher of a certain generation is to mention St. Cuthberts; if their eyes glaze over and they drift off into pleasant reminiscences for at least a few hours about getting taken there for school shoes and can still tell you their Divvy number, then you know they are the real deal. (Leithers went to Leith Provident Co-op of course.)

Banner of the St. Cuthbert’s Branches of the Scottish Co-operatives Women’s Guild. © Edinburgh City LibrariesSt. Cuthbert’s Department Store on Bread Street in 2008, now converted into bars, a hotel and a conference centre. On the right is a modern block, rebuilt from a late 1930s addition to the store which was its furniture showrooms, featuring the first glass curtain wall in Scotland. © Edinburgh City Libraries

I’m afraid I can’t find many decent photos of Bread Street and St. Cuthberts that have appropriate permission to share, but there are loads on Scran, here (top tip, use your library card option in logon and see them all in high res) or some on Canmore, here. And the seemingly endless collection on Flickr of Mike Ashworth has this lovely promotional cover with a coloured illustration of the store (before the 1930s additions)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/3552162236/in/photolist-mipbgh-mio4Hi-mio6Jx-mio6ZH-aFev4c-2kWTNSz-kWJ9Se-6pTL5u-moR6zG-FJhwEU

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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The thread about Sciennes; how you pronounce it, where the name comes from and its important moment in Scottish literary history

This thread was originally written and published in February 2020.

There was some chat the other week about place names that were so unapparent in their pronunciation that they were the shibboleth of the real local. One which kept coming up for Edinburgh was Sciennes. First things first, it is Sciennes; as in Sheens; as in Machine; as in Rise of the Machines. The name comes directly from St. Catherine of Siena, a convent in her honour being established in the locality in 1517. In Scots, Siena was Seynis or Schiennes. From there it’s a short leap to the modern Sciennes, but the pronunciation has remained true to the original local form.

St. Catherine of Siena, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

The convent occupied a 2 acre site and was surrounded by an enormous wall, some 13 feet high. The land had been fued off the Burgh Muir (common moor land owned by the city) to the Canon of St. Giles in 1513, who founded a chapel and hermitage to St. John before giving it to the Sisters.

The ruins of Sciennes convent, from Old & New Edinburgh by James Grant. Probably in use as a barn at this time.Another view of the same ruins, looking north east towards Salisbury Crags in the distance. From the Hutton Drawings, vol. 2, CC-BY-SA 4.0 National Library of Scotland

Given the location of the convent some 1,000m outside of the city walls (hence the big defensive enclosure) it is consistently missed off of all the older town plans and it’s not until Kirkwood’s plan of 1817 that it makes an appearance. We can see an old rendition of Scienes and the reference to Siena. The designation as a monastery is a mistake.

Kirkwood’s 1817 Town Plan. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Notice the 2 arrows in the above map and notice that they correspond to two obvious kinks in the modern street layouts. These mark the turn of the boundary wall of the convent – I have found a good rule of thumbs when looking at old streets in Edinburgh which is that if there is a bend or kink in an otherwise straight road that seems to serve no apparent purpose, there’s a very good chance that it respects the alignment of an even older property boundary. See this thread for instance. Or this one!

Kirkwood’s 1817 Town Plan. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The presence of the convent also explains why Sciennes Street (marked in green below and now known as just Sciennes) splits off at a very shallow angle from Causewayside (red arrow) . Until the early 19th century one of the two main road south east out of the city – leaving that odd gushet formed by Lord Russell Place; it was the alignment of the original footpath to the convent from St. Giles to the north.

Ainslie’s 1804 Town Plan. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

After the quagmire of the Boroughloch began to be drained in the 18th century and the Meadows began to be laid out as a pleasant, formal park, some of the rich of the city built large villas along the southern edge. A roadway formed at the back of the plots to give coach access, meeting the old route to the convent at its eastern extremity.

Ainslie’s own Plan of 1804, showing the villa plots along the south of the Meadows. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

And at this junction stood a place called Sciennes Hill House. This building isn’t actually on a hill as such, but when entering the city from Causewayside it is at the top of the ascending grade from the south. The Scottish philosopher and historian of the Enlightenment, Professor Adam Ferguson of Raith, lived here at the end of the 18th century. His property was ¾ miles from the city walls at the Bristo Port and so his friends took to jokingly calling it Kamchatka on account of its perceived remoteness.

Adam Ferguson in 1781, by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

The National Gallery has the below sketch of the house and notes a soiree which took place there in 1786 that was attended by a young Walter Scott, Robert Burns, Dugald Stewart, Joseph Black, James Hutton and John Home! One can only imagine how inadequate you’d feel, staring into your tea, sitting round a table while that lot had a debate! This was both the first and last time that the young Scott met Burns and it was a formative experience for the former, then just 15 years old.

Sciennes Hill House. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

By this time Sciennes was a well-established place name and had given its name to that lane along the back of the big villas, as Sciennes Road, to Sciennes Hill House, to Sciennes House Place and Sciennes Hill Place. And what became of the house itself? Well, believe it or not, it’s actually still there, hiding in plain sight, even if you look straight at it. Its clever disguise is that the back of the house is now the street façade, and the house has been subdivided and reconstructed into what looks from the street to be an unremarkable tenement.

But when you look at it again when armed with the facts, suddenly things begin to look incongruous. That rubble finish doesn’t quite look Victorian, that stair door is out of alignment, and the vertical spacing of the windows is well out with its neighbours.

The rear of Sciennes Hill House is now the front.

Oh and those plaques are a bit of a give away too…

Plaque on Sciennes Hill House. CC-BY-SA 3.0 Kim Traynor

And if you can get around the back, this ain’t your usual finish for a tenement back green! It’s quite obviously the (restored) façade of an altogether different and grander Georgian house.

The original (restored) facade of Sciennes Hill House. CC-BY-SA 2.0 Kim Traynor

The rear of the building was restored in 1989 (there are pictures of it here just prior to this) and given the much quite regular appearance above. In the old engraving below it can be clearly seen where the original doorway and portico was, at 1st floor level, by the gap in the horizontal bands of masonry and window spacing.

Sciennes Hill House in 1891, from “The Literary Landmarks of Edinburgh”in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.

St. Catherine of Siena lent her name to one other street in the neighbourhood, that of St. Catherine Place, a street of grand Victorian semi-detached villas on the boundary with The Grange. For some reason though, when Bertrams Ltd. built a large factory in Sciennes, they went for a different spelling and we got the St. Katherine’s Works. Bertrams were ironfounders and engineers, specialising in roller machines for papermaking and printing.

Bertram’s St. Katherine’s Works. Note the malt kiln cupola to the right of the large chimney, from the West Sciennes Distillery. © Edinburgh City Libraries

Bertram’s were a very successful company in their time, with a foundry in Gorgie at Westfield and also one in London – another St. Katherine’s Works – to serve the newspaper industry. Sadly the Sciennes works burned down in 1983 at what was a difficult time for the company, with the Scottish print and papermaking industries in terminal decline. The whole company was gone by 1985 and when new housing was built on the site later it was appropriately named Siena Gardens.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/maleny_steve/42942242202

Sciennes of course also gives its name to the local school (I am typing to you from an old teacher’s desk of that establishment, recovered from a skip). I recall the first time I saw the name, written on an Edinburgh schools football league fixtures sheet about 30-odd years ago and yes I too did imagine it was pronounced Scy-ens.

There’s one more “place” in Sciennes that’s been lost to time, which is the romantic sounding Glen Sciennes. Indeed it’s a place that never even existed anywhere but on paper as a faux-Highland brand name for the spirit from a distillery in the district belonging to Thomas Duncanson & Co. It was being advertised in the London papers in 1854 but the firm went bankrupt in 1859, so Glen Sciennes had a life span of only five years. After this the distillery ran through a number of other names; the Newington Distillery, the West Sciennes Distillery; the Edinburgh Distillery before closing in 1925 by which time it was the last malt distillery in the city. The buildings were incorporated into Bertram’s works.

1850s Post Office Directory entry for the Glen Sciennes distillery.

I don’t know of any contemporary illustrations of the Sciennes distillery, but a William Channing sketch of 1852 of Sciennes Court – where the Sienna Gardens student flats are these days – shows its chimney in the background.

Sciennes Court, 1852 by William Channing © Edinburgh City Libraries

Always be on the lookout for unexplained kinks in old streets or buildings that feel a bit out of place; if you dig into them a little bit you might find out more local history than you bargained for!

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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Ocksters, Oxscares and Oxcars: the thread about the islands of the Forth and what some of their names mean

Oxcars. A lump of rock crowned by a lighthouse in the Firth of Forth. I was interested to see that a 17th century variation of the name was Ocksters – the Scots word for armpit!

Ocksters – Excerpt from Greenville Collins’ map of the Firth of Forth, 1693. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

A few years previously it’s down as Ockstairs on the original sketches for John Adair’s map of the Forth, but then in a 1703 imprint it has been amended to Oxscares. The oldest variation is recorded in 1621 as Oixtaris in the Register of the Privy Council on the subject of the need for a beacon on these rocks, which are submerged at high tides.

Oxscares – Adair’s map of 1703. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

If you are wondering where these variations come from, then wonder no more. The root is Ox Scaris, as in ox skerries; ox being the animal and skerries being intertidal rocks. Ocksters etc. are simply phonetic variations. It’s likely this animal theme lent its name to the neighbouring rock of Cow(s) & Calves, which was traditionally Muckriestone as it lies off the north on Admiralty coastal charts.

Cows and Calves off of Inchmickery, OS 1 inch map of 1895. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Working our way down the Forth from it’s outer reaches, we can explore the toponymy of the islands; the meanings of their place names. The Isle of May, at the eastern extreme, is likely from the old Norse, Má ey or gull island. Stands to obvious reason. The Gaelic Magh, an open field, is less likely.

Isle of May – Excerpt from Adair’s map of the Firth of Forth, 1703. Excerpt from Greenville Collins’ map of the Firth of Forth, 1693. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

About 8 miles south, and a little west, of the May is the Bass Rock, whose unmistakable outline is prominent along the East Lothian coast. The origin of its name has been lost to history, John Milne suggests a relation to death, from the Gaelic bàs, as it was long a place of banishment and execution, but that’s just conjecture and some of Milne’s use of Gaelic is often a little bit too convenient. But we do know that the Bass gives the scientific species name to the Northern Gannet – Morus bassanus – for which it is the largest colony. These animals were scientifically described as far back as the 16th century as Anser bassanus, and later in the 18th by Linnaeus as Sula bassana. The Scots word for them was however the solendguse or solen goose. In the spring and summer, the Bass takes on a white appearance, caked in the birds and their droppings.

The Bass Rock, John Gabriel Stedman, 1780. Collection of the National Galleries of Scotland

Moving west, the next island is Craigleith. Milne suggests the Gaelic Creag Liath – the grey rock. (In Gaelic, Liath – is the colour of a blue sky, but when used in reference to the landscape it refers to something being greyish. This is a feature of the Gaelic language when dealing with place names; the colour use is subjective and descriptive, not literal). However Craigleith is actually comprised of very dark, volcanic rocks – it needs to be squinted at in combination with the stains of guano to take on a greyish hue. It should also be noted that in Gaelic the word liath does not have the soft “th” ending that Leith does in English. Notice on the 18th century map below that the earliest spelling is Lieth, with the I before the E, which was also the case at this time for maps showing the port and town of Leith along the coast.

Craig Lieth. Excerpt from Adair’s map of the Firth of Forth, 1703. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Next up is The Lamb. Milne goes for the easy Gaelic Làmh for an arm or handle, one assumes for the shape, but in that language the –mh sounds like an English –v. As I said before, sometimes Milne’s use of Gaelic for the roots of place names seems to be just too convenient. There might also be a Norse origin for the name, or it may simply be named after the animal (see already Oxcars, Cows & Calves). It is after all flanked by the North andSouth Dog rocks. This island was bought by Uri Geller (yes, that Uri Geller) in 2009 so he could dowse for Egyptian treasure on it. Yes, I’m being serious, he described that it’s an analogue for the layout of the Egyptian pyramids and holds the buried treasure of Princess Scota. He recently told the BBC that he has spent a single night on his island and didn’t enjoy it one bit and was declaring the island a micronation, the Republic of Lamb. In January 2026 Mr Geller again made the headlines when he declared Donald Trump an honorary citizen and president of the island.

Lamb, North Dog and South Dog, from OS 6 inch map, 1853. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Moving west is Fidra, for which Milne once again gives a fanciful Gaelic derivation, but it’s now believed to be Old Norse, from Fiðrey or Feather Island as a result of all the seabirds. Eider feathers would have been gathered here in yore for use in bedding. Robert Louis Stevenson based his plan for Treasure Island on Fidra (amongst other islands). Like its eastern neighbour, Fidra too is guarded by North and South Dogs.

Fidra as shown on the OS 6-inch map, 1854. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Next along is Eyebroughy, the fourth and final of the basalt islands between North Berwick and Aberlady. It is shown as Ibris in Adair’s 18th century chart and the 1850s Ordnance Survey place name book for East Lothian also gives Eyebrochy. The Old Norse Ey for island seems an obvious start for the word, but I cannot find a reference explaning the second part.

Ibris. Excerpt from Adair’s map of the Firth of Forth, 1703. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

There is now something of a gap until the next major island; it is 12.5 miles from Eyebroughy to Inchkeith, which looms large in the centre of the Firth. Its etymology gets a whole chapter on its Wikipedia page, but the logical explanation may be Innse Coit, a hybrid of old Gaelic (Island) and Welsh (wooded); a wooded island. The oldest recorded form is Ked in the 13th century, but as the Place Names of Fife points out, its an unlikely candidate to be known for being wooded, so once again we probably just don’t know. It was used to quarantine victims of syphilis from Leith and Edinburgh in the 15th century, of that we do know. The Grandgore (syphilis) Act of 1497, saw the island made a place of “Compulsory Retirement” for sufferers, obliged to board a ship at Leith and to remain on their island “till God provide for their health“.

“Inchkeith on the Forth in a Fresh Gale”, John Gabriel Stedman, 1781. Collection of the National Galleries of Scotland

Interestingly, the Georgian mapmaker extraordinaire of Scotland, William Roy, left Inchkeith off his Great Maps of both the Lowlands and Highlands, with the Forth forming the boundary between these two geographical divisions in the east of the country. But there is a square that looks like a repair where it should be…

Here be… nothing? The position of Inchkeith on Roy’s map. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Next up is Oxcars, 5.5 miles west of Inchkeith, where we started this thread. If we move south from there we get to Inchmickery and Mickrystone (now Cows & Calves, as previously mentioned also). The derivation of Mickery may be from the Gaelic Innis nam Bhiocaire, island of vicars, as like most of the islands of the Forth it has been a Christian retreat at one time or another. The island was fortified during both World Wars, and it’s not without good reason that there’s a legend that its outline was deliberately made to look like an anchored battleship. The logic is that any U-boat commander who made it into the Forth would pop up his periscope, be taken in by the cunningly disguised island and would have fired his torpedoes and disappeared before realising he’d wasted them on a rock. If you know your Royal Navy ships, the fortifications are a reasonably good likeness to HMS Nelson and Rodney, but I have it on expert authority that the legend is precisely that, a legend.

Inchmickery. CC-BY-SA 2.0, Anne Burgess and HMS Nelson. Move the slider to compare the outlines.

North of Cows & Calves is Inchcolm; probably the best known of the Forth Islands and certainly the most visited. It is named for Saint Columba (Colum Cille in Gaelic) who reputedly visited it in the 6th century. The modern name is from the Gaelic Innis Choluim orColumba’s Island. The old joke goes “how many inches are there in the Forth?” and you’re meant to count the islands. In The Scottish Play, Shakespeare refers to the place as Saint Colmes Ynch.

“Inchcolm on the Forth in a Summer Shower”, John Gabriel Stedman, 1781. Collection of the National Galleries Scotland

Just off Inchcolm lies Inchgnome, but the jury of the best minds in Scottish placenames is still out on where that one might come from. Probably from some obscure Gaelic saint.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wwshack/26451815521

South and west lies Cramond Island, which obviously takes its name from the village off which it lies. That in turn comes from Caer Amond, Caer being old British for a fortification (referring to Roman fort on the site), and Amond or Almond is the river of that name. Like the rivers Esk and Avon (and others), River Almond is a tautology as the latter word simply means river.

Cramond Island

Another tautological place name is the island of Carcraig , just northwest of Inchcolm. The Car element is an Scots word for rock (from the Old English Carr) and the Craig bit is the Scots word for the same, from the Gaelic Creag.

Carcraig, from OS 6 inch map, 1853. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The other principal islet off of Inchcolm is Meadulse. This rock is entirely covered by the tide which makes it an excellent growing place for seaweed and the name likely comes from the edible dulse which grows there and is known to have been a medieval food source.

The final, and westernmost, of the Inches of the Forth is Inchgarvie, that convenient supporting foothold for the Forth Bridge. Its name is likely from the Gaelic Innse Garbh, or rough island, the –bh sound in Gaelic sounding like a –v in English. This is on account of its rugged appearance (and perhaps its legendary population of giant rats!).

Inchgarvie, OS 25 inch map of 1892. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Upstream of the Forth Bridge there are fewer islands. The Beamer Rock‘s name is quite literal, and refers to an early beacon that was there from time immemorial to guard ships from it. The older form was Bimar or Bymerskyrr, the –skyrr from the Scots skerry, for a low islet or sea rock. This islet suffered the indignity of having the very beacon it was named for demolished (the base was blown up with explosives) in 2011 to make way for a tower of the Queensferry Crossing.

Beamer Rock in 2010. CC-BY-SA 2.0 Simon Johnston.

I won’t move any further west than this, as this site is principally concerned with the geography of Edinburgh, Leith and the Lothians. However there are of course countless other islets and named rocks in the Forth. Many of these are simply a variation on Craig, Carr and Bush, all words referring to rocks. Selected others in the Edinburgh area include:

• Birnies, a collection of tidal rocks at Granton. I cannot find a description of the name, but the –birnie in the placename Kilbirnie comes from the Gaelic Cill Bhraonaigh, or Saint Brendan.
• Another rock near the Birnies, Chestnut logically takes its name from its similarity of appearance to the fruit of that tree
• General’s Rock on the Granton Foreshore, allegedly where English forces under Lord Hertford (Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset) landed in 1544 before the burning of Edinburgh and Leith.
• Gunnet Ledge, a navigational hazard directly north of the entrance to the Port of Leith and west of Inchkeith, marked by a pair of bouys called the East and West Gunnet since at least the start of the 19th century. Probably a variation of Gannet, alternative older spellings include Dunnet and Guneet.
• Martello Rocks, sitting at the old tidal entrance to the Port of Leith and named retrospectively for the Martello Tower that was constructed upon them to defend the approaches
• Megmillar another intertidal rock off of the Granton foreshore, whose name I can find no explanation for.

The names of many of these islands were given to Council housing tower blocks built in the north of the city in the 1950s and 60s. There re are of course many more, but I hope this whistle stop tour has been of some interest.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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The thread about the Fourth Day of Christmas; the Birds, Bards or Bords of Burdiehouse

This thread was originally written and published in December 2019.

This post in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas is preceded by a thread about Little France.

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; Four Collie Burdiehouses. I thought I had a really clever link here with the old Scots for blackbird, but it was a red (black?) herring. So let’s instead turn our attention to the suburb of Burdiehouse. This name goes back in record to the 17th century, as Burdehouse and other forms such as Burdiehouse, Bordiehouse and Burdihouse. But what does it mean and does it have anything to do with wee birdies?

Burdehouse – James Dorret’s map of Scotland, 1750. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

There is an intriguing and (most probable) dead-end theory that this – like Little France before it – is another one of those Mary Queen of Scots and her French connections; some early references referring to it as Bordeaux. But that does not happen until a century after the mapmakers began to write it down and the confusion may arise because of a simple misunderstanding. Burdeous was one of the principal ways that the French town is spelled in Scots. It’s not a huge leap to imagine a mapmarker removed the “h” by mistake from Burdehous, leaving Burdeous, which inevitably lead to modernisation as Bordeaux.

The “Great” mapmaker William Roy gives us a clue as to another, more likely meaning of the placename in his 1750s Lowland map of Scotland (even though he can’t always be relied on to give accurate place names – the ones he gets wrong are usually pretty obvious and far from the mark); he calls it Bardy Burn.

Bardy Burn – William Roy’s Lowlands map of Scotland, 1750s. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Bardy may be the Scots Borde, from the Anglian Brerd, for a bank or a border, which would be a perfect toponymy for the Burdiehouse Burn that has long defined a boundary here. An alternative may be Bord house; a farm that supplied the laird’s table, although to me the former seems preferable. Anyway, by the time the Ordnance Survey came along and formalised spellings, it was recorded as Burdiehouse in the Name Books for Midlothian of 1852, as was the story about the French connection:.

This name is corrupted from the French word Bordeaux which was given it in the last century when the first house was built.

Ordnance Survey Name Books 1852-3, Midlothian, Volume 17, OS1/11/17/101

Burdiehouse gives its name to a thick and regionally important layer of limestone that was first quarried here, and on the slopes above the village are the remains of its old lime kilns, which were worked right up until the early 1930s.

Burdiehouse Lime Kilns, CC-by-nc-nd Chris Hill on Flickr

These extensive quarries are situated on the farm of Burdiehouse Mains, the property of Mr David Baird who continually keeps about 20 men employed constantly at them. They are of immense depth and present to the the eye prodigious arcades, supported by natural Gothic pillars

Ordnance Survey Name Books 1852-3, Midlothian, Volume 17, OS1/11/17/103

The 1842 Gazetteer of Scotland recoded that Burdiehouse produced 15,000 bolls of lime annually. The landowner and proprietor of the quarries at this time was noted as being Sir David Baird of Newbyth in Haddingtonshire – it might be a reasonable avenue of exploration to see if the place was owned by the Bairds in the 1750s when Roy came along and called it “Bardy House“…

Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet of Newbyth 1757-1829, landowner of Burdiehouse. Portrait by John Watson Gordon in the National Portrait Gallery, London

For much of its existence, the village was a “neat and commodious” little roadside hamlet, with two-storey cottages for farm and limestone workers, a mains (the principal farm of an estate), the lime quarries and kilns to the south, a school and a public house – the romantically named Old Bordeaux. Later, Shale was mined just to the south of the lime workings and nearby at Straiton too by the Clippens Oil Company, but working stopped in the 1890s after a dispute with the Edinburgh & District Water Trust whose pipes ran above the workings and directly underneath the village.

In 1929, as suburban Edinburgh marched ever southwards, the section of what was then known as the Penicuik Road here was renamed as the Burdiehouse Road. New streets were drawn up off of it named for one of the old farms in the area – Southhouse Avenue, Road, Terrace, Broadway – for those typically prim but dreary streets of interwar suburban bungalows. In Burdiehouse itself, Edinburgh Corporation built a small addition of 18 cottage flats arranged around Burdiehouse Square in 1938, completed just before the outbreak of war.

The war put paid to any more bungalows, but the Southhouse scheme was revived post-war as one of permanent, prefabricated council housing. The streets to the north of Southhouse Road kept that name, those to the south of it took the Burdiehouse name. The prefabs were a mix of types provided by the Scottish Housing Group, a portion of which were intentionally temporary until permanent houses could replace them, others were permanent, being a mix of BISF Houses, the Framed Orlits and Whitson-Fairhurst Houses. These all remain to this day, but heavily updated with new insulation and rendering, roofs, windows and doors.

Three types of prefab in Burdiehouse. From left-to-right, a rare BISF with its original steel panel cladding on the first floor, an Orlit with the slab of its original flat roof and concrete window surrounds and the Whitson-Fairhurst.

The vast expansion of housing in 1947 relocated the epicentre of Burdiehouse to the north, with a parade of shops and a new (temporary) school. A modern, permanent school was completed in 1957 ( closing due to falling rolls and council cuts in 2009).

The little village became left behind as Old Burdiehouse; when it was decided to upgrade the Penicuik Road to dual carriageway in the late 1960s, the road was bypassed around it and cut it off as a cul-de-sac, with the road renamed Old Burdiehouse Road. More recently, acres of new-build housing estates have begun to spring up between Burdiehouse and Gilmerton, totally changing the character of the village once again.

The Edinburgh and Leith twelve days of Christmas threads continue with a post about “Fiveways” and Goldenacre.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

The thread about the Fifth Day of Christmas; A theme of Five and Golden but not rings

This thread was originally written and published in December 2019.

This post in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas is preceded by a thread about Burdiehouse.

The part of the song that all children love to belt out with gusto; On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; Fiveways and Goldenacre. I’m really quite pleased with this one, although it does mean there’s actually two places to describe, even if they are quite close together.

Fiveways might not be familiar if you if you aren’t a regular cyclist, stroller, jogger or dog walker on the North Edinburgh Path Network in the Trinity area of the city, but it’s a rather obvious placename for where five different paths converge.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/131232392@N06/52144261048/

These paths are all old railway trackbeds, acquired by the then Lothian Regional Council in the 1980s and resurfaced for use as walking and cycling routes. There weren’t ever 5 railways here though, there was one railway crossing another which had a junction just north of the crossing.

Fiveways, the blue line of the Caledonian Railway crosses the olive green lines of the North British Railway

The first railway here was the Edinburgh, Leith & Newhaven which opened a route from Scotland Street in the north of the New Town to Trinity (to serve Newhaven) in 1842. This line was extended into the city at Canal Street Station via the Scotland Street Tunnel, but in 1868 this awkward approach was bypassed entirely and a new connection was made from Abbeyhill, under Easter Road and Leith Walk, through Powderhall and connecting with the line to Trinity and Granton at Trinity Junction. This new branch had to pass under the Caledonian Railway, which in 1864 had built a line to North Leith (a station usually referred to as Leith North!) around the north of the city from a junction at Dalry Road station.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/16868866237/in/photolist-naHqPR-2nKb7m2-2np3REh-2kYmyVj-2kHZao6-2nqrLov-2mVjVvR-2n4mPiw-TmSfdE-2iQs9Lj-2me1CRR-2mzQVLP-2iRHes2-DwZ41b-2eBEgca-2iKXUbc-rGDmek-n6cqRi-QwvPCQ-28PnJE6-2iufbUx-6nxF5z-6nBPoj-oSAzFv-6nxFVT-6nBQGL-6nBQfE-CJ7Rue

The lines from Scotland Street and Roseburn were closed and lifted in the 1960s, the diversionary route from Abbeyhill hung on for occasional traffic to an oil depot in Granton until 1984.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/117983829@N03/13842304435/in/album-72157643950735923/

When the trackbed was acquired by the council, it was landscaped into a level crossing, with the appearance of five distinct paths meeting here.

The five paths of Fiveways, left to right are; the North British line to Abbeyhill; the line to Scotland Street; the Caledonian line to Leith North, the line to Trinity and Granton; the Caledonian line to Dalry Road. CC-By-NC-ND 2.0, Chris Hill on Flickr

The fingerpost at the top of this post is a neat link to the Golden part of this thread as one of the signs is of course pointing to the nearby area of Goldenacre. As a place name, it is relatively modern; from the late 18th or early 19th century. Older forms go back to the later part of the 17th century as Goldenriggs or Goldenaikers. A rigg, an aiker or an acre all obviously referring to a unit of measurement for farmland. The “golden” part is either a colour reference; as is frequently used around the Lothians in reference to the wildflowers or crops that once grew here; or is a reference to the monetary productivity of the farmland at one time.

There were no structures at Goldenacre in a 1759 feuing plan of the lands of Wariston by Robinson. A house is marked, but not named, here on the 1804 town plan by Ainslie in a plot of land owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, which was at this time a salient of North Leith Parish on the south side of the Ferry Road. The principal house and name for the area at this time was Bangholm, with Goldenacre named and shown in the 1817 plan by Kirkwood.

Goldenacre and Bangholm(e), on either side of the Ferry Road, 1817 town plan by Kirkwood. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Villas, and later tenements, began to appear along Inverleith Row and the Ferry Road throughout the late 18th and into the 19th century, but Goldenacre remained a nursery and market garden along with most of the land in the district. The 1876 town plan shows it clearly, with a range of garden structures and planting to the south of the house.

1876 Ordnance Survey town plan. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

A noteable resident of Goldenacre was Lieutenant General Sir William Crockat (or Crokat), who retired to No. 52 Inverleith Row in 1830 after a 23 year career in the army which had left him invalided. He defied expectations of the fever received at Walcheren and injuries received in Spain and from which he suffered for the rest of his life and spent a long 44 years retirement here. Crockat was the youngest son of John Crokat Esq. of Hawkfield in South Leith, a master slater. It was as Captain Crockat that he was the last officer who had been in charge of the imprisonment of Napoleon Bonaparte on St. Helena, who had been present at his death and who had arrived back in Britain with the despatches that brought news of his death. For his efforts, Crockhat was awarded £500 and a promotion. It is alleged that he cut a lock of hair from the head of the deceased and presented it to his sister as a keepsake. In his obituary it was noted that among his keepsakes from his time on St. Helena, he had in his possession a silver plate and knife used by Napoleon and which bore the Imperial eagle; a portrait of him as a boy, taken from his Imperial snuff box; a wooden spatula that he used to clean his gardening spade in exile; a cordon worn by him during the “100 days campaign”; his silk stocking and garter; and a carved spirits case of cocoa nut wood.

The death of Napoleon, by Charles Steuben. Crockat is the officer in the red jacket with his back to the artist on the far right © Rebecca Young/Fondation Napoléon

In 1887 the suburban tranquillity of Goldenacre changed when the Edinburgh & Northern Tramways cable hauled tramway reached here as its northern terminus. Suddenly this quiet patch of market gardens was a desirable development plot just a few minutes away from the city centre by tram car and inevitably it was soon feud for building. Within 2 years of the arrival of trams, the old house and its gardens and nursery were gone, and new streets of tenements had sprung up; Bowhill, Montague, Royston, Monmouth and Goldenacre Terraces. These other street names were all derived from family connections of the landowner, the Duke of Buccleuch.

Goldenacre has its place in Scottish rugby lore, the playing fields of George Heriot’s School being created from the old Banholm Nursery in 1899, the school trust having long been the feudal superior landowner of them. The centrepiece to the playing fields is the red brick 1901 sports pavilion.

The Pavilion at Goldenacre, CC-by-SA 2.0 Sandy Gemmill

The sports grounds were extended in 1926 with the opening of New Goldenacre, a senior rugby pitch for the Heriot’s FP team complete with a grandstand. At the time this was one of the finest rugby grounds in the country.

The Grandstand at New Goldenacre, CC-by-SA 2.0 Sandy Gemmill

The Edinburgh and Leith twelve days of Christmas thread continues with a post about the Guse Dub.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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The thread about the Sixth Day of Christmas; the geese of the Guse Dub

This post in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas is preceded by a thread about “Fiveways” and Goldenacre.

On the six day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; the Guse Dub (a laying), where Guse is the old Scots word for a Goose (see also the Guse Pye or Goose Pie house), and the Dub refers to a pond and spring where geese or ducks were once kept. Guse Dub was a common Scots term for a farm or village duck pond. If you are interested in golf, you may know it as a the name of the 14th hole of the Prestwick course, which at one time was alongside an old pond.

The Guse Dub reproduction historic place name sign CC-by-NC Leo Reynolds

But in the context of Edinburgh, this place name has long been applied to a little gushet* of the Southside, where the Crosscauseway meets Causewayside (* = Gushet is the Scots term for a triangular portion of land). The dub itself, described as “rather an unsavoury pond” was sold by the city in 1681 to one John Gairns, who built a house hear called Gairnshall and is first directly referred to in 1698 when the then proprietor of the house and land wanted to be freed from his feudal obligation of watching and warding (i.e. enforcing the law) of the district.

Kincaid’s town plan of 1784, showing the location of the Guse Dub in the triangle of land at the western end of Crosscauseway, where it meets Causewayside, now Buccleuch Street. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The pond itself was recognised as a health hazard and drained around 1715 (in connection with the draining of the nearby Boroughloch for the same reasons) and turned into gardens. It originally drained naturally east, towards St. Leonards, and then down through Holyrood Park towards the Canongate, where it joined the East Foul Burn.

“Cross Causeway and Buccleuch Church, Edinburgh”, William Smeall, c. 1820s. The artist is looking up Chapel Street, the Guse Dub is on the right, behind the wooden shack and barrel. Museums & Galleries Edinburgh – City of Edinburgh Council

A house of this name once stood here, on 2 acres of ground, which was also known as the Yardhall. In 1786, an avert in the Caledonian Mercury lists a shop and house for sale in this area, described as being “on part of the lands of Goosedub and Yardhall, lying on the east side of the street, leading from Bristo Street and Chapel of Ease to the Sciennes”. In 1788, there is an insurance record for Peter Stewart, described as a baker in the “Goose Dub, near Edinburgh“. From 1805, William Brown, blacksmith, is listed as resident here in the city’s postal directory. He is joined in 1809 by James Reid, a grocer. In 1815, a Mr McCrea, resident in the Goose Dub, subscribed one pound to the city’s Waterloo Patriotic Fund. Brown is still listed under Goose Dub in 1822, at which point the place name disappears from the directories.

Looking towards the Guse Dub along West Crosscauseway, an 1830 sketch by Walter Geikie. © Edinburgh City Libraries

Walter Scott refers to the place in his Waverley Novels, where a Scot in London attempts to argue that Edinburgh is indeed a riverine city:

“The Thames!” exclaimed Richie, in a tone of ineffable contempt- “God bless your honour’s judgement, we have at Edinburgh the Water-of-Leith and the Nor-loch!”
“And the Pow-Burn, and the Quarry-holes, and the Guse-dub, fause loon!” answered Master George, speaking Scotch with such a strong and natural emphasis.

The Fortunes of Nigel, 1822

Since the pond was drained, the Guse Dub has been a bit of a neglected wedge of open space that can’t seem to find a purpose. For many years it was the site of a drinking fountain and horse trough, but since the city turned itself over to motorcars it has been little more than a forlorn tarmac island-cum-carpark. The Causey Development Trust have been trying for a long time to improve this situation, they’ve more on their project and the history of the Guse Dub here;

The Guse Dub in 1912, a photograph by J. C. McKenzie of the Edinburgh Photographic Society. A horse drinks from the trough in its centre. © Edinburgh City Libraries

It is probable that Scott’s decision to list it that kept the place name in the popular imagination after this, and left a well known record of it that was rehabilitated in more recent times when the traditional place name signs were put around the city.

Goose, Patrizio Belcampo. © the artist. Image credit: NHS Lothian Charity – Tonic Collection

The Edinburgh and Leith Twelve Days of Christmas thread continues with a post about Swanston and the Swan Spring.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

The thread about the Seventh Day of Christmas; Sven Swans a Swanstoning

This thread was originally written and published in December 2019. It has been edited and corrected as applicable for this post.

This post in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas is preceded by a thread about the Guse Dub.

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; Sven Swans a Swanstoning. I refer of course to Swanston, in the far south of the modern limits of the city, beyond even the Bypass. A veritably ancient name, one which is probably as old as Edinburgh itself, and even today distinctly rural in character.

The farmstead of (Easter) Swanston in 1914, an illustration from “The Hills of Home” by Lauchlan McLean Watt

The name is first recorded in 1214 and unfortunately doesn’t actually have anything to do with swans. It is of Norse origin, from the given name Sveinn (modern, Sven). Sveinnstun meaning a farmstead belonging to a man called Sven. This puts the probable origin 1 or 2 centuries before the written record in the 10th or 11th centuries. It is recorded as part of the medieval barony of Redhall, which occupied much of the land between the northern slopes of the Pentland Hills and the back of the rising ground south of Edinburgh.

Looking south to Swanston, with the Pentland Hills rising above. The T-shaped plantation was at least 100 years old by this point. A 1955 photograph by J. Wilson Paterson. © Edinburgh City Libraries

As a farm, Swanston was part of the feu of Templelands; ground granted by the Knights Templar in the 12th or 13th century to Thomas, Lord Binning, a nobleman based in East Lothian. In the 15th century the farm was sub-fued (the feu, or primary plot of land held for the Crown by the laird, was split and granted to two subordinate (or vassal) lairds. These became the separate holdings of Easter and Wester Swanston, with the Swanston Burn forming the boundary, before being reunited in the late 17th century under the Trotters of Mortonhall. And so it was for the next 4 centuries, with not a lot changing; the road beyond Swanston leads nowhere but to the hills and the city was hardly visible 4 miles away beyond the rising ground of the Braid Hills to the north, with its southern boundary a full 2½ miles away in the middle of the 19th century.

The settlement was dominated by the principal farmhouse, formerly Wester Swanston, with the collection of thatched cottages that housed most of the population being on the locus of Easter Swanston.

While Swanston for most of its existence has been fundamentally detached from the metropolis within whose boundary it sits, in the middle of the 18th century it became linked to it when the City gained an Act of Parliament that allowed it to extract drinking water from the springs in its vicinity. A cistern house and three filter beds – gravel and sand filled reservoirs to settle any sediment and silt out of the water – were built south of the village and it was connected to the city by wooden pipes.

Swanston cistern house. Photograph © Fiona Coutts via British Listed Buildings

A house was added by the City in 1761 for the use of the water engineer and officials, and in 1830 this would be modernised and expanded into the villa of Swanston Cottage. Gargoyles and tracery added to an extension at this time are reputed to have been removed from St. Giles Cathedral by the architect William Burn when he “modernised” the ancient church in a manner befitting the style of the time. The cottage garnered a reputation as being something of a “municipal pleasure house“, where City officials would come to make merry. From 1867-1880, the family of Robert Louis Stevenson rented the cottage in the summer as a holiday house. The teenage Robert spent much time here, including walking to and from the city, and refereed to the place as “a stilly hamlet that vies with any earthly paradise“. Robert’s nurse, Alison Cummingham (“Cummy”), was the sister of the resident waterman, and lived with him in his cottage from 1880 to 1893. Her initials are on the lintel above the door of that house.

Swanston Cottage in 1889. © Edinburgh City Libraries

On his walks from the family home in Edinburgh’s New Town or from the University to Swanston, the young Robert would pass the water house of the Comiston Springs, which also provided the city with clean drinking water, and where the four springs were named after animals. Coincidentally, one of these was a swan, the Swan Spring emerges in the water house through a pipe crowned with a cast lead swan.

Inside the cistern house. The swan is on the left. On its right are the hare, the fox and the Peeswee (Lapwing) © Scottish Water

The name of Swanston has been applied to housing built between the 1930s and 1970s to the north of the City Bypass in the district of Fairmilehead. By the middle of the 20th century, these ancient farmhouses of the village were verging on unfit for habitation. They still had floors of compressed earth; their roofs were still thatched with reeds from the Tay (the only such lowland houses in Scotland); running water had only arrived in 1934 and they were without electricity until 1949. The City bought the cottages in 1956 and restored them, for which they earned a Scottish Civic Trust award in 1964. They were leased them out as council housing. Most were purchased under “Right to Buy” legislation, but one survives under municipal ownership and is probably Scotland’s only thatched council house.

The thatched cottages of Easter Swanson in 1955, the year before the Corporation of Edinburgh bought them to restore them. A photograph by J. Wilson Paterson. © Edinburgh City Libraries

In 1927, a woman by the name of Margaret Carswell took a lease of land from Swanston Farm to create a 9-hole ladies’ golf course, having found it impossible to gain access to any of the city’s many other golf courses. Men were later admitted (by popular consent of the membership) and it was expanded to a full 18 holes. It is the only visitor attraction of the “village”, which boasts no public facilities, having lost its school in the 1930s.

The Edinburgh and Leith-themed Twelve Days of Christmas continues with a post about The Maiden Castle.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

The thread about the Eight Day of Christmas; who were the Maids of the Maiden Castle?

This thread was originally written and published in January 2020.

This part in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas thread is preceded by a post about Swanston.

On the eight day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; the Maiden(s, a milking). This, perhaps surprisingly, is the first documented name applied to Edinburgh Castle, in a Charter of King David I in 1142; Castellum Puellarum – the Castle of Maidens. It was not until a century later in the time of King Alexander III, 1265, that it is referred to as Castrum de Edynburgh or Castle of Edinburgh. The oldest remaining structure in the castle, St. Margaret’s Chapel, was built in David I’s time in the middle of the 12th century.

St. Margaret’s Chapel, the oldest structure in Edinburgh Castle and the city itself. 1890 photograph by Alexander Adam Inglis. © Edinburgh City Libraries

No clear explanation exists for the Maiden reference. There are a number of Maiden Castles in England, all except one of which are Iron Age hill forts. This might be a descriptive tame for a “fortification that looks impregnable” or a euphemism implying that it has never been taken in battle. It may also be the evolution of a Brythyonic language term Mai Dun, meaning a “great hill”. Stuart Harris, the man who wrote the book on Edinburgh place names, discounts this theory for Edinburgh; “there is nothing whatsoever to suggests that this was a translation of some[thing] earlier“. He points out that the original references is the Latin – Puellarum – which was translated in the 13th century to its English and French equivalents – Maidens and Pucelles.

Some of the more improbable tales include an early 14th century reference in the Chronicles of Lanercost to a community of nuns who lived here in the 6th century under the Irish Saint Moninne or Modwenna, before being ejected, or to it being a safekeeping place for Pictish princesses. More likely is that it was a romantic term taken from Arthurian legend, one that may have been applied by David I himself. In Arthurian lore, the Land, Island or Castle of Maidens, is a place visited by a man in his dreams where only women live.

“Galahad at the Castle of Maidens”, by Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911)

In the 12th century, the Welsh chronicler Geoffrey de Monmouth – who was one of the prominent figures in popularising the Cult of Arthur at the time – wrote in his History of the the Kings of Britain of the Castellum Puellarum as “facing Albany” i.e. looking towards the Lands of the Picts and Scots. At this time, these would have been north across the Forth from Edinburgh. He is also credited with the invention of the Duke of Loth – husband to a sister of Arthur – and from where Lothian takes its name. Geoffrey de Monmouth’s chief patron was a nephew of David I and it is probable that David had met him. The sixteenth century Scottish historian and intellectual George Buchanan and the 20th century Arthurian scholar Roger Sherman Loomis both lend credence to this theory.

In Edinburgh lore, the term Maiden also has a much more grisly connotation; it was an early modern device of public execution, a form of guillotine.

The Maiden, 1823 sketch by James Skene. © Edinburgh City Libraries

The Maiden was introduced to Edinburgh in 1564 to replace the town’s sword, which was worn out and needed replaced. The Provost and Magistrates of Edinburgh ordered its construction by the carpenters Adam and Patrick Schang and George Tod. The whole contraption could be disassembled for storage, only being moved to the point of execution and erected as required. It was returned afterwards, and this is referred to in the town records as “careying of the Maiden ther and hame agin”.

The Scottish machine is made of oak and consists of a sole beam 5 feet in length into which are fixed two upright posts 10 feet in height, 4 inches broad and 12 inches apart from each other, and 3½ inches in thickness, with bevelled corners. These posts are kept steady by a brace at each side which springs from the end of the sole and is fastened to the uprights 4 feet from the bottom. The tops of the posts are fixed into a cross rail 2 feet in length. The block is a transverse bar 3¼ feet from the bottom, 8 inches in breadth and 4½ inches in thickness, and a hollow on the upper edge of this bar is filled with lead…

The axe consists of a plate of iron faced with steel; it measures 13 inches in length and 10½ inches in breadth. On the upper edge of the plate was fixed a mass of lead 75 lbs in weight. This blade works in grooves cut on the inner edges of the uprights, which are lined with copper…

Proceedings of the Society of Antiquities of Scotland, Vol.III, 1886-8

Notable victims of the Maiden include James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, one time Regent of Scotland and the man reputed to have introduced its concept to the country, Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll and his son Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll. The Maiden was last used in 1716 to execute John Hamilton at the Mercat Cross for the murder of the landlord of a tavern during a brawl. It was again taken down and carried hame agin but was thereafter forgotten about. The original was rediscovered over a century later and is now on display in the National Museum of Scotland.

The Maiden on display at the National Museum of Scotland. CC-by-SA 3.0 Kim Traynor

The Edinburgh and Leith-themed twelve days of Christmas thread continues with a post about Lady Fife, her house, well and “brae”

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret