Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 2

EDINBURGH
lotte Square. Porticoes in any similar relative situa-
tion are more rare, yet three tetrastyle Ionic ones
occur respectively on the two W gables of Waterloo
Place, and on a gable above the low houses of Blenheim
Place, looking toward Royal Terrace. Festoons and
other florid ornamentations occur in some places, such as
Charlotte Square and Drummond Place ; even massive
pieces of sculpture are not wanting, such as two great
sphinxes on the summit of the extremities of the N side
of Charlotte Square ; while most of the minor kinds
of Grreeo-Italian ornature, such as rusticated basements,
moulded architraves, window pediments, string-courses,
cord-cornices, and various sorts of balustrades, abound
almost everywhere. The Venetian, the Florentine,
and other varieties of the ornate Italian style also are
not uncommon. A greater diversity and richer orna-
ture have been introduced into the more recent buildings,
exhibiting varieties or features not previously adopted ;
and this occurs as well in reconstructions upon old sites
as in new buildings on new ground. A taste for pillared
doorways, porticoes, mouldings, sculptures, and orna-
mentations in the renovation and remodelling of build-
ings or of parts of buildings, particularly for shops, ware-
rooms, or other places of business, has, since about the
year 1830, been little short of a passion. Not in even the
smallest colonnades has Tuscan or Doric simplicity as a
rule been deemed sufficient ; but either Ionic grace or
Corinthian finery, though with good taste in the detail,
has been generally affected. The necessity of re-fashion-
ing old dwelling-houses into new shops at the smallest
possible cost, has also produced what may be called a new
style in street architecture, by covering over the area of
the sunk fiats, projecting a new front to the first story
half-way across that area, and giving to the new front an
aspect of pretensiousness or elegance, so as to make it
appear to be related to the old building in the same
manner as a porch or a verandah. Reconstructions of
this kind, however, are not always contiguous to one
another, and even when contiguous are too often of diffe-
rent projections and in different fashions. The public
buildings, both civil and ecclesiastical, have diversities
of their own, and are so interspersed through the
thoroughfares as to add very largely to the aggregate
diversity of the street views, but will afterwards be
noticed in detail.
The Castle. — The rock on which the Castle stands is
volcanic, of the variety called basaltic clinkstone.
Its mineral constituents are principally lamellar felspar
and titaniferous iron, with very little augite. It pre-
sents a striking specimen of an erupted mass, soaring
steeply up, comparatively little weathered, and spreading
out on the summit into an inclined tabular form. Its base,
from N to S, measures about 300 yards ; from W to the
line of the Castle's outworks on the E about 360 yards.
Its northern, western, and southern sides are precipi-
tous — in some parts, almost perpendicular ; and its
highest point rises nearly 300 feet above the vale
below, and 383 feet above the level of the sea. The
northern skirts, at least in their eastern parts, un-
dulate down in grassy pleasure-grounds to "West
Princes Street Gardens ; the western skirts go down in
bare rock almost sheer to the valley ; and the southern
skirts have been very much altered by operations con-
nected with the New Western Approach. On some parts
of the shoulders and the slopes, beyond the present ram-
parts, are vestiges of former fortifications. On the face
of the precipice, on the N side in particular, stands
a fragment called Wallace's Cradle ; and at the base of
that precipice is a small old ruin of date 1450, called
Wallace's Tower — the name Wallace, in both instances,
being a corruption of Well-house. In the sloping
pleasure-ground, on the N, also, is a curiously sculp-
tured upright stone ; and, adjacent to it, is a walk
carried through the subterranean remains of some old
outworks.
The area immediately E of the present Castle ram-
parts, at the head of Castle Hill, has now the form of
an esplanade or spacious glacis, and slopes gently into
line with the hill-ridge which slants E to Holyrood.
EDINBURGH
It measures about 120 yards from E to W, and about
80 yards from N to S, and had, till about 1753, a ridgy
form, defended all round by strong military outworks.
It is now entirely open, with merely parapet walls along
its side, and serves both as a parade ground for the
garrison and a lounge for the idle. It contains three
monuments, afterwards to be noticed ; overlooks the
romantic masses of the south-western part of the Old
Town ; and commands magnificent views of the New
Town and of the country beyond. The rock of the hill
eastward from the esplanade, and of part of the esplanade
itself, is principally sandstone, intermingled with red
and blue slate-clay, and the strata of it incline towards
the erupted rock in the vicinity of it, but dip away from
it in other places. The original level of the esplanade
was considerably lower than it is at present, and com-
municated with the entrance to the Castle by a long
flight of steps ; and it had, on its eastern verge, an
ancient battery, called the Spur, which was demolished
about 1649. The present level arose from the for-
mation of a narrow roadway after the demolition of
the Spur battery, extended by deposits of earth, dug
from the N side of High Street, about the year
1753, at the founding of the Royal Exchange. A line
of wall, from Wallace's Tower on the N to the old
Overbow Port on the SE, anciently crossed the head of
Castle Hill, separating the esplanade from the town,
and was pierced, in the line of approach to the Castle,
by a gateway called the Barrier Gate, which was tem-
porarily restored when George IV. visited Scotland in
1822, and to isolate the garrison when the cholera raged
in the city in 1832. The ground E of the line of that
wall, on the mutual border of the esplanade and Castle
Hill, was, as far as the head of the West Bow, the site of
the original Edwinesburg, or nucleus of Edinburgh city.
This ground was partly excavated to a great depth in
1850, for the formation of a large water reservoir, and
was then found to contain relics of successive periods
back to the 9th or the Sth century. First were found
coins of the early mintage of George III. ; next vestiges
of the outwork fortifications demolished in 1649 ; then
a stratum of moss containing a well-preserved coin of
the Lower Empire ; and lastly, at a depth of more than
20 feet below the present surface, sepulchral relics were
found, indicating a burying-ground of apparently not
later date than the centuries referred to.
The Castle occupies the crown of the Castle rock W
of the esplanade, and measures above 6 acres in area and
about 700 yards in circumference. It is supposed to
have been occupied as a military stronghold long before
the Christian era. The Caledonian Reguli held it in the
5th century, and perhaps much earlier ; they and the
Northumbrian Saxons often sharply contested for the
possession of it from 452 till the time of Malcolm II. ;
and the Northumbrian king Edwin reconstructed its
fortifications about the year 626, and gave it the name
of Edwinesburg, signifying Edwin's Castle, afterwards
transmuted into Edinburgh. Its buildings have under-
gone many alterations, extensions, demolitions, and re-
movals at various periods ; so that they presented, both
internally and externally, in the Middle Ages an appear-
ance very different from what they present now. Indeed,
with one single exception, all of earlier date than the 15th
century have been swept away. The principal ones in
1572, previous to a siege of thirty-three days by the
troops of the Regent Morton and the English auxiliaries
under Sir William Drury, are described as follows in
the memoirs of Kirkaldy of Grange : — ' On the highest
part of the rock stood, and yet stands, the square tower
where Mary of Guise died, James VI. was born, and
where the regalia have been kept for ages. On the N
a massive pile, called David's Tower, built by the second
monarch of that name, and containing a spacious hall,
rose to the height of more than 40 feet above the pre-
cipice, which threw its shadows on the loch 200 feet
below. Another, named from Wallace, stood nearer to
the city ; and where now the formidable Half Moon
rears up its time-worn front, two high embattled walls,
bristling with double tiers of ordnance, flanked on the
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