Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 2

EDINBURGH
crescents — Coates Crescent and Athole Crescent, with
enclosed shrubberies, and a row of stately trees. This
being at one time the approach by road from Glasgow
and other places in the W of Scotland, it was here many
a stranger received, not it might be without some sensa-
tion of surprise, his first impressions of the architecture
of Edinburgh. Melville Street, running parallel to
Maitland Street, about 200 yards to the NW, contains
houses which were occupied by Dr Andrew Thomson
of St George's Church, Dr David Welsh, the historian
Tytler, aud Dr Candlish ; and Manor Place, crossing
the SW end of Melville Street, contains, on its NE
side, a house which was occupied by the distinguished
authoress, Mrs Grant of Laggan. Rutland Square, a
small, neat, aristocratic quadrangle, lies a little SE of
Maitland Street ; and Rutland Street, also neatly built,
and originally akin to the Square, leads from it to a
convergence of thoroughfares at Princes Street, but was
partly demolished in 1869 by clearances for the Cale-
donian station. An area, partly SW and partly Nff of
the parallelogram terminating in Manor Place, was laid
out in years subsequent to 1864 for a western extension
of the city, and is now being extensively covered with
elegant houses. The chief places in it are West Chester
Street, Palmerston Place, Lansdowne Crescent, Grosvenor
Crescent, Grosvenor Place, Coates Gardens, Magdala
Crescent, Belgrave Crescent, Elgin Street, Burns Terrace,
Buccleuch Crescent, Douglas Crescent, and Argyle Cres-
cent. Most are in styles of elegance vying with one
another and with the best of the earlier portions of the
New Town ; and it is proposed, for easy communication
with the left bank of the Water of Leith, to erect a new
bridge from the N end of Magdala Crescent to a point in
Bells Mills road opposite the Orphan Hospital. Another
extension arose contemporaneously with this, which
nearly adjoins it on the SW, extending southerly to
the Merchiston district. It includes crescents, places,
and streets, called Caledonian Crescent, Road, and
Place, Orwell Terrace, West End Place, etc., reaching
out as far W as Tynecastle, and consists, in great degree,
of working-men's houses. A considerable aggregate of
streets and places occupies a triangular area between
Lothian Road, West Maitland Street, and Dairy, but
passes into junction on the S with Fountain bridge, and
these are not of a character to challenge detailed notice.
Morningside. — This suburb adjoins the south-western
extremity of the city, and occupies generally a south-
ward slope, extending from the breezy Bruntsfield Links
to the foot of the Braid and Blackford Hills, on which
it looks out. It comprised for long only a main street
of various character descending southward, and leading
to that point on the 'furzy hills of Braid,' whence
Scott took his well-known description of the city,
which appears in Marmion. This main road has now
a great many branching streets and crescents of fine
and oi'nate character, running eastward to Grange and
Newington, and westward by Merchiston to Dairy,
the occupants of these having been generally drawn to
the district by its mild climate, contesting, as it does,
with Inveresk the fame of being the Montpelier of the
E of Scotland, and attracting many summer residents
and invalids. At the bottom of the slope runs the
Jordan Burn, which here skirts the foot of the hills, and
fences the lands of ' Canaan ' and Canaan House. Several
buildings flank the main street, among these the Lunatic
Asylum at the foot westward ; Established, Free, U. P. ,
and Episcopalian churches, the Morningside Athenaeum,
etc., at other points. The Established church, on
the E side of the main street, is a handsome
building with a spire, erected in 1S37 after designs
by John Henderson. Originally a chapel of ease to
St Cuthbert's, it is now a quoad sacra church. The
Free church stands a little further N on the W,
being erected originally in 1844, but rebuilt and
enlarged in 1874 at a cost of more than £3000. It is
now a neat structure in Early Pointed style with tower
and spire 130 feet high. The original U.P. church is a
neat edifice built about 1860, but being found too small
for the wants of the congregation was sold in 1881,
EDINBURGH
and has been interiorly altered for the Morningside
Athenaeum ; a new and larger edifice of Norman
type, with square tower, nave, aisles, and transepts,
having been erected on a neighbouring site. The Epis
copalian chapel is in the French Gothic of the 13th
century ; was built mainly in 1876, at a cost of between
£10,000 and £11,000, from designs by Hippolyte J.
Blanc ; and has nave, transepts, chancel, an elegant
spire, and vestry. In a road running parallel to
the E called Whitehouse Loan is St Margaret's Con-
vent, established in 1835, an educational institu-
tion and nunnery of the Roman Catholics, and having
within its grounds a small but handsome chapel de-
signed by Gillespie Graham. The whole district here
was anciently forest-land, known as the Boroughmuir,
and was the scene of a desperate battle in 1336 between
a Scottish army under the Earls of Moray and March
and a bod}' of foreign mercenary troops under Count
Guy of Nanmr, who were on their way to reinforce the
army of Edward III., then encamped at Perth. A road
leading westward past the S wall of the Established
church, being hid by higher grounds on the N from the
view of any part of Edinburgh, was anciently the route
taken by military forces stealthily approaching or retir-
ing from the city, and was that used by Prince Charles
Edward's army in 1745 when they made their detour
round the city to Arthur's Seat. On a slope just above
the Jordan Burn is the site of the ancient chapel of St
Roque, and in the wall enclosing the Established church
is fixed what is known as the Bore Stane, a large unhewn
block of red sandstone, in which the royal standard was
planted, by a lore or hollow in it, at the gathering of
the Scottish army previous to the disaster of Flodden
Field in 1513. About a mile S at the entrance to
Mortonhall is another stone, of probably similar intent,
sometimes confounded with it, called the Hare (i.e.,
army) Stane. Chnrchhill House in Churchhill, was
built by Dr Chalmers, and occupied by him in his
latter years. The Judge Lord Gardenstone, and Pro-
fessor James Syme, the eminent surgeon, also lived and
died in this district.
On the Colinton road, Wfroni the main line of Morn-
ingside a short distance, is the ancient baronial fortalice
of Merchiston Castle, dating from the 14th or 15th cen-
tury, a principal feature in which is a square tower,
with a projection on one side. Within the battlement
in accordance with an ancient Scottish fashion, a small
building with a steep roof rises above the tower. This
tower, as in other instances, is adorned with notched
gables and flanking turrets, which much enhance the
picturesque effect of the building. The castle belonged
from ancient times to the Napier family, three members
of which were successively lord provosts of the city in
the times of James II. and James III., and another the
illustrious John Napier, the inventor of logarithms, who
was born here in 1550. The castle figured prominently
as a fortified place of defence in the ' Douglas Wars '
and the civil strifes of the time of Queen Mary. It still
gives the title of Baron Merchiston in the Scottish
peerage to the descendants of the ancient family of
Napier ; but the castle has received several modern ad-
ditions, and is now used as a private boarding school for
young gentlemen.
Architecture. — The styles of building throughout the
city have, in some degree, been incidentally indicated
already, but they exhibit such great diversities and
striking contrasts, that some notice in detail is desir-
able. The architectures of the New Town and the Old,
considered in the aggregate, both in themselves and
their groupings, may be characterised as in the one case
pedantically symmetrical, and in the other romantically
irregular, and exhibit a remarkable contrast. This
strikes one everywhere; whether in the E, where the
terraces of the New Town on the face of the Calton
Hill look down upon the masses of the Old, huddled
confusedly together in the cliff-screened hollow, or in
the middle, where the two towns directly confront each
other on a common level with only the Nor' Loch valley
lying between ; or in the W, where, from the streets and
487