EDINBURGH EXPERT WALKING TOURS - BLOG

As the world's first UNESCO City of Literature - honoured for the sheer quantity of literary figures associated with the city - Edinburgh is commonly associated with figures like Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, and (more recently) Irvine Welsh and JK Rowling. But one figure not often associated with the city also has his origins here.

Kenneth Grahame, best known for the classic Edwardian children's story The Wind in the Willows was born in the heart of Edinburgh's New Town, on Castle Street, in March 1859.

He only spent the first year of his life in the city, before the family moved further north to Loch Fyne. Grahame's mother died when he was just five years old, and Kenneth and his three siblings passed into the care of their grandmother in Berkshire.

It was as a child in these quiet rural villages, with cobbled streets and old stone houses, and the River Thames running nearby, that Grahame would first become acquainted with the rich pastoral imagery which dominates his most famous book.

After failing to get into Oxford University, Grahame found himself working at the Bank of England, and would rise to become secretary of the bank before retiring in 1908.

The circumstances of his retirement aren't fully understood - rumours abounded of a disagreement with one of the directors, which may account for the fact that Grahame only received a fraction of the full pension he should have been entitled to. Five years earlier Grahame had been involved in a strange incident in which he was shot at by a 'madman' with a pistol - he was unhurt in the attack, but along with the circumstances of his retirement it suggests a kind of harsh, unsafe, unpredictable 'Wide World' experience which is a far cry from the safe, peaceable, bucolic world of The Wind in the Willows.

Grahame had written short stories and had a degree of success as a published author with stories such as The Reluctant Dragon, but he had had nothing in print for a decade before The Wind in the Willows was published, just four months after his retirement from the bank. During these years Grahame had married and had a son, Alastair, known in his family as 'Mouse', who had been born prematurely, was blind in one eye, and was frequently sick throughout his childhood.

During his son's bouts of illness, Grahame would spin bedtime stories for him, and wrote letters to him, featuring the animal characters who would later fill the published story. 

Edinburgh's landscape of hills and valleys is not just a challenge to visitors arriving with suitcases, nor merely one of the features that gives the city its character and charm. It has also been, in a very real way, a major factor in transforming our understanding of our planet.

In the eighteenth century, James Hutton - who died on 26 March 1797 and was buried in the Greyfriars Kirkyard - developed some literally groundbreaking theories that revolutionised our understanding of the earth beneath our feet, and the landscape of the city Hutton had been born in was key to some of those ideas.

Hutton had observed rock features in the landscape of the Scottish Highlands which indicated a difference in the ways in which the rocks had been created, and by extension represented significantly different periods of creation - that some rocks were considerably younger than other rocks beneath and around them.

This was in direct contradiction to the prevailing view of Earth at that time, the view laid down by the church that the planet had been created in the space of just seven days, a few thousand years ago...

In the cliffs of Salisbury Crags, around Arthur's Seat, is a stretch of rock known as Hutton's Section, one of the first examples Hutton found where the layers or strata of the rocks contravened the geological understanding of the period.

​On the isle of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland, is the first described example of Hutton's Unconformity, the curious intersection of older and newer rocks jutting out of the surface of the planet.

In these sections, Hutton considered that molten rock - magma - had forced its way up from the liquid centre of the Earth, pushing around and between existing rocks, before cooling and solidifying.

Thus the modern understanding of Earth as a planet constantly shifting, renewing and changing started to be formed - we now know that Arthur's Seat was formerly an active volcano, something that wasn't known before Hutton - and by extension the consideration that the planet is continuing to shift and develop even under our feet today. 

Hutton's theories led him to create the notion of 'Deep Time', a consideration of our planet's existence not in terms of hundreds or thousands of years, but millions and billions. His work helped to shape what we think of as the Scottish Enlightenment, and among his friends were other Edinburgh men men such as Adam Smith - founder of modern economics - and the philosopher David Hume, as well as Charles Darwin, who studied in the city in the 1820s.

Today in Edinburgh, an attraction called Dynamic Earth continues Hutton's work, entertaining and educating children about what's happening beneath their feet - and it's just a stone's throw from the site of Hutton's original investigations, bringing the modern science of geology right back to where it all started.

So as you struggle up the hills and steps of the Old Town, consider instead the importance this landscape has had on our investigations of our planet, and try to find it inspiring, instead of just tiring!

Explore more of  Edinburgh's historic landscape with my private city walking tours!
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Most visitors to Edinburgh come to grasp the notion of its divided identity pretty quickly - the city is split into an Old Town and a New Town area, two contrasting sectors, each with their own history and style. And other visitors become intrigued by the concept of Edinburgh's 'underground' city, a slight misnomer for the above/below divide of the city's development.

But what is less apparent to visitors (and even many locals) is the way that Edinburgh is made up of an accumulation of former towns and settlements across the landscape which have been amalgamated into the city as it grew and expanded. Here's a quick introduction to some of the lost and hidden formerly separate towns which today make up the  city of Edinburgh...

LEITH
First and foremost, probably the most apparent conjunction between an independent town and Edinburgh. Leith grew up around the port on the coast to the north-east of Edinburgh, and although the port was a major feature in Edinburgh's existence it wasn't formerly brought within the city itself until 1920, when nearly 90% of the respondents to a referendum voted in opposition to joining Edinburgh - before the two districts forcibly brought together anyway! Many of those who live and work in Leith still identify as 'Leithers', and the area retains a quite distinct sense of identity and function from the city of Edinburgh itself.

CALTON
One town which was thoroughly wiped off the map (and the landscape) was the village of Calton, in the valley to the north of the city, nestled between the ridge of the Royal Mile and Calton Hill. This town was on the main route into Edinburgh from the port of Leith, the site of the Trinity College Church, founded in the 1460s, and one of the original locations of the royal botanical gardens. 

In the 1840s, Calton was sacrificed to the march of progress as the railways came to Edinburgh, when the village was demolished in order to create land for building the North British Railway Station - today it's Waverley, the city's main railway station.

NEW BYGGING
Up until the sixteenth century, New Bygging was a small settlement just beyond Edinburgh's city wall, but on one of the main routes into the  city from the west. It was also a convenient place where Edinburgh held its markets, offering a flat, open patch of land that wasn't available within the city itself.

Following the Battle of Flodden in 1513, as Edinburgh sought to more effectively fortify itself against the prospect of an English invasion, an extension to the existing city wall was planned, which would bring New Bygging within the provision of Edinburgh for the first time. The area today is the Grassmarket, one of the city's most popular social hubs - but for much of its history would have operated as a separate town outwith Edinburgh itself.

CANONGATE
Another former town beyond the walls of the  city, Canongate was the name for the town on the main road out of Edinburgh to the east, the lower end of the stretch of street known today as the Royal Mile. This section of the Mile is still called Canongate, but the town remained distinct from Edinburgh itself - just a few hundred yards from the city gates - until 1856. 

The name, incidentally, doesn't refer to any weaponry or cannons, but describes one of the positions in the church, the canons of Holyrood Abbey, who would have made their way along this route to get up to St Giles' Cathedral. Hence the area became known as the walk - or 'gait' - of the canons. It has long since been corrupted to Canongate.

CANONMILLS
Another church connection, the 12th-century mill town down the hill to the north of the city was also associated with the abbey at Holyrood. When the city's guild of baxters (bakers, and specifically breadmakers) was established they were compelled to have their flour supplied from these mills, thereby guaranteeing support and maintenance of the church-associated properties.

Only a part of one of the original mill buildings survives in this area, but a small piece of stonework marking the Baxter's Land and dated 1686 was discovered during developments in the 1960s, and is preserved in the buildings of the petrol forecourt at the Canonmills junction.

STOCKBRIDGE
A bustling and thriving suburb of Edinburgh today was originally a town which grew up around the original wooden bridge - the stock bridge - which provided access over the Water of Leith and up into the city itself.

Today the area is a local haven for shops and cafes, with a regular farmers' market, just a short stroll from the heart of the New Town.

DEAN VILLAGE
A fascinating contrast with nearby Stockbridge, the Dean Village was another town on a route into the city, on a bridge across the steep valley worn away by the Water of Leith, transformed in this area into a power supply for a string of mills along its banks. The area was another main supplier of flour and milled products for the city, thriving on the through-traffic forced through the area by the access road into Edinburgh.

After the 1830s, developments to the New Town led to the building of a major bridge across the valley, cutting the Dean Village off the main traffic route, and the area went into terminal decline as businesses (and residents) moved away. Today the Dean Village is a remarkable little rural haven almost in the heart of the city, and offers an alternative image of Edinburgh from the tourist heartland that most visitors see.

The developers of these grand houses were aware, however, that there was no ready access from these properties to the centre of the city - the only access was a circuitous route around the northern side of Calton Hill, joining onto the main road into the city from the port of Leith and into the New Town from there. This was not an especially convenient arrangement for the high status families who were being enticed to come and live in these exclusive properties.

So an application was made to construct a major access road across the steep ravine to the west of Calton Hill, to connect straight onto Princes Street and the heart of the New Town. The only obstacle to the development was the Calton Burial Ground, which occupied the hillside on this side of the rock.

Permission was granted to construct a roadway through the land where the graveyard sat, with provision made for the developers to exhume all the bodies in the strip of land where the road would run, leaving the graveyard intact on either side of the new access way. These bodies, exhumed in the name of progress, were to be granted reburial in a new burial ground, to be located on the south-eastern side of Calton Hill.