Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland

EDINBURGH
old Town and County Bridewell, built in 1791-96. The
eastern group, dating from 1845-47, was originally the
Debtors' Jail, but has since the abolition of imprisonment
for debt been used for general prison purposes. There
are also legalised cells in connection with the police-office,
court-house, and justiciary court.
Register House. — The General Register House of Scot-
land contains not only the registers of sasines, inhibi-
tions, and adjudications, but also the national records,
the official writings of the clerks and extractors of the
Court of Session, Jury Court, Court of Justiciary, the
Great and Privy Seal, the Chancery, the Lord Lyon's
office, and the Bill Chamber, and the duplicate registers
of births, marriages, and deaths. The ancient national
records were destroyed by Edward I. and by Cromwell,
while those of later date were, prior to the building of
the Register House, kept in part of the Laigh Parliament
House, almost inaccessible, suffering injury from damp,
and constantly exposed to great risk from fire. In their
present place of keeping all these conditions are reversed.
The original Register House at the E end of Princes
Street, opposite the North Bridge, was built partly in
1774-76, partly in 1822-26, after designs by Robert
Adam, in the Italian style, and cost about £80, 000. A
long curtain wall, on each side of a central, spacious,
double flight of steps, divides a space in front of it from
the street. It stood originally at a distance of 40 feet
from the facade, but was shifted back, first in 1850, and
again still farther in 1891, when the staircases were also
altered. The double flight of steps has handsome balus-
trades, and leads up to the principal entrance. The
front of the edifice is 200 feet long, has a basement
storey mostly concealed by the structures in front of it,
and two upper storeys full in view, and is ornamented
from end to end with a beautiful Corinthian entabla-
ture. It projects slightly in its central portion, and is
adorned there with four Corinthian pilasters surmounted
by a pediment, in the form of an attached portico ; has,
in the tympanum of the pediment, a sculpture of the
royal arms; and has a turret at each end, one con-
taining a clock and the other having dials showing
the direction of the wind. In the curtain wall is a recess
with a niche containing a barometer and thermometer.
In the centre of the edifice is a circular saloon, 50 feet
in diameter, with galleries, from which corridors branch
off to the different departments. Over it is a dome, and
in a recess is a marble statue of George III. by the Hon.
Mrs Damar. A second block, erected in 1857-60, at a
cost of over £26,000, is immediately behind the first
one, and is entered from West Register Street. It forms
a quadrangular pile, much smaller than the original
building (to which it is similar in style, but not quite
so plain), and contains the duplicate registers of births,
marriages, and deaths. It stands on the site of Ambrose's
Tavern, the reputed scene of the famous 'Noctes.' The
third block was erected in 1869-71, at a cost of about
£8000, after designs by Mr Matheson. Situated to the E
of the second, with which it is connected by a long stone
corridor, it is used entirely for record volumes, and is a
circular structure, 55 feet in diameter and 65 in height,
surmounted by a dome, from windows in which the
entire lighting takes place. Eight massive piers at
regular intervals project from the general line of the
exterior wall, a dado course dividing the elevation into
a lower portion, with the piers rusticated and the inter-
spaces plain, and an upper portion, in which both have
moulded panels.
Post Office. — Opposite the Register House, at the
corner of Princes Street and the North Bridge, is the
General Post Office, occupying the site of Shakespeare
Square and the old Theatre- Royal. The old Post Office,
built in 1819, farther E, in Waterloo Place, is now used
as the New Waverley Hotel. Of the new office the
foundation-stone was laid on 23 Oct. 1861 by the late
Prince Consort, almost the last public act of his life,
and it was opened for business in May 1866. It cost,
inclusive of the site, about £120,000, and is a magni-
ficent edifice, in a moderately rich type of the Italian
style, after designs by Mr Matheson. An addition waB
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EDINBURGH
made to the S side in 1891-92. The N front, toward
Princes Street, is the principal one, and shows a recessed
centre two storeys high, and massive wings three storeys
high. The recessed part, facing a pavement 43 feet wide,
is pierced with three lofty circular-headed arches, resting
on massive piers, and giving entrance to a vestibule of
34 by 32 feet. In the upper storey are five windows
with balustrades in front, flanked by Corinthian columns,
and with alternately circular and angular pediments.
The basement storey of each wing is rusticated. The W
front is entirely similar to the N front, with the excep-
tion that it has no vestibule. A massive cornice and
balustrade surmounts all the three fronts, and the
balustrade is intersected at intervals by pedestals
supporting ornamental vases. The Corinthian columns
on the N and W fronts, 16 feet high, consist of a single
stone. There are branch offices, with money order,
savings-bank, insurance and annuity, and telegraph
departments, at George Street, Lynedoch Place, and
Newington ; and there are also throughout the city and
suburbs 36 sub-offices, of which 20 have telegraph
departments, and nearly 90 pillar and wall letter-boxes.
A Telephone Company has its head office in Frederick
Street, with several branch stations throughout the city.
The Observatories. — The old Royal Observatory, a
plain, dingy, three -storey tower on the Calton Hill,
was projected in 1736 and erected in 1776, and is now
used only for anemometrical and rain gauge purposes.
The second Royal Observatory, to the E of it, is a very
graceful little building in the form of a St George's Cross,
built in 1818 from a design by W. H. Playfair. On each
of the four fronts is a hexastyle Doric portico, with a
handsome pediment. In the centre is a dome 13 feet
high, with a solid pillar 19 feet high in the middle for
the astronomical circle. Having unfortunately, from the
growth of the town and the increase of the railway traffic
in the hollow below, become unsuitable for the finest
and most accurate observations, it has now in turn
given place to another, a new observatory having been
erected in 1893 on the E shoulder of Blackford Hill,
where the Corporation gifted three and a half acres
for the site. The buildings consist of an observatory
on the N side of the site, and detached residences for
the Astronomer Royal and his assistants. The obser-
vatory proper — Italian in style, with Greek features —
has a plan like the letter T, with a northern front
180 feet long and 30 feet high, flanked at the east end
by an octagonal tower 75 feet high and 40 feet across,
and on the W by a similar tower 44 feet high and 27
across. Between the windows of the central part, which
are somewhat ornately treated, are carved the signs of
the Zodiac, and the wall is surmounted by an ornamental
balustrade. In the towers (which are surmounted by
copper domes of cylindrical form), on massive hollow
brick piers, are placed the 15-inch refracting (E) and
24-inch reflecting (W) telescopes. The larger tower also
contains a small vault for the sidereal clocks. The
central part contains various work-rooms, and on the roof
is placed a 15-inch heliostat. Extending southwards is
what forms the stem of the T, in which is placed the
heating and lighting apparatus and the library. A
little to the W of this main building is the transit
house, with walls and roof of corrugated iron, covered
with curved louvres of tinned steel, with an air space of
6 inches between. It contains, on insulated piers, the
transit circle, with a telescope of 8 '6 inches aperture,
and two large collimators. The cost of the whole was
about £34,000. The most of the instruments, as
well as the library, which is one of the finest in Europe,
were formerly in the observatory at Duneoht House,
and were gifted to the nation by the Earl of Crawford
and Balcarres in 1889. The observatory on the Calton
Hill has been purchased by the Town Council, and in it
are placed, under the charge of the City Astronomer,
the fine set of instruments formerly in the private obser-
vatory at Murrayfield, belonging to Mr Cox of Gorgie,
and gifted by him to the city in 1889.
Markets. — The chief public market for butcher meat
is on the slope from the Old Town ridge, close to the