The National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street underwent a major renovation in 2016, creating new galleries inside the building, and a remodelled front street for visitors to enjoy. Part of this remodelling including re-siting the existing statue of William Chambers (who gives his name to the street) and introducing a new statue to join him.

This new statue, from the artist Alexander Stoddart, is of William Henry Playfair, one of the city's greatest nineteenth-century designers and architects.

He stepped into the shoes of Robert Adam, who had designed much of the burgeoning New Town of Edinburgh, at the end of the eighteenth century, and in 1813 had taken over the design process for Edinburgh University's new quadrangle building. 

This quadrangle - which became the New College, and later renamed into Old College - stands at the end of Chambers Street, with its main access from South Bridge. And it's fair to say that the building is still one of the city's architectural highlights.

Playfair made a few changes from Robert Adam's initial vision, and the finished building became an immediate hit, not only with staff and students of the university, but with visitors to the city, too.

Having established himself as a safe pair of hands, architecturally speaking, Playfair would go on to design more of the city's most iconic public buildings. 

Public works that bear Playfair's name include the iconic National Monument on top of Calton Hill (popularly known as 'Edinburgh's Shame' or 'Edinburgh's disgrace'), the National Gallery of Scotland and Royal Scottish Academy buildings on the Mound, the Royal Observatory on Calton Hill, and St Stephen's Church, near Stockbridge in the New Town.

​It is not too much of an overstatement to say that Playfair helped shape the vision of Edinburgh the visitors (and locals) enjoy today. His trademark style often incorporated classical and neoclassical components, and the columns which adorn many of his buildings and monuments helped to give the city one of its nicknames, 'the Athens of the north'. 

As such, it is only fitting that this grand designer of Edinburgh should now be commemorated with his own statue in the city's Old Town. 

See more of Playfair's work with my private walking tours of Edinburgh...

At the eastern end of the New Town, at the junction where the Omni Centre stands today, you'll find a statue of the world's most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes.

The statue commemorates the birthplace of Holmes's creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, born in a house previously on this site (but since demolished) in 1859.

As one of the city's greatest literary figures, it is fitting that the monument should be in the form of the creation rather than the creator - with his trademark deerstalker hat and bulbous pipe in hand, the figure will be instantly recognisable to people from all around the world.

​Holmes holds the world record for being the most portrayed character on film, and as is often the case, it is likely he is better known from these dramatised versions of the stories than from Doyle's original books.

Doyle studied at the medical school in Edinburgh from 1876 to 1881, and it was there that he came under the influence of a lecturer, Dr Joseph Bell, who would later be credited with being the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, the likeness was considered so accurate that after the first Holmes story was published, another of Bell's former students, the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, wrote to Doyle to congratulate him on such a successful character study!

From time to time I do venture beyond the limits of Edinburgh's bypass to other towns and villages across Scotland, and this weekend had the pleasure of visiting Cockenzie, a short drive or bus ride to the east of the city.

An historic fishing village, the area has a natural harbour which was formalised as Port Seton in the seventeenth-century. Just outside the small town is the battlefield where the Battle of Prestonpans was fought in the Jacobite uprising of 1745. 

Cockenzie House and gardens have recently been transformed by the local community with a range of holiday accommodations, cafe, artists' studios, health and beauty practitioners, and space for weddings and events, all within the historic surroundings of this seventeenth-century house and gardens.

At the end of the manicured lawns is a small structure which has an unusual history. Seemingly constructed from a rough stone, it is shaped like a small castle, with the letters HECLA built into the frontage, above a small arched doorway.

The arch of the door is formed by the jawbones of a whale, and the whole grotto is constructed from volcanic rock. The Lothians area is known for its volcanic activity - with Edinburgh alone having three extinct volcanoes - but the rock here has come from rather more distant shores.

The Caddell family who owned the house initially built their fortune exporting salt from Scotland to the fishing communities of Iceland. The ships which sailed in and out of the port at Cockenzie needed rocks to provide weight which were returning from Iceland sans cargo, and so they were filled with volcanic rocks from the Icelandic shores.

Much of this hardened lava had been spewed from one of Iceland's largest volcanoes, called Hekla, or Hecla. After the ships arrived back to Cockenzie for refilling with salt, the rock was unloaded and much of it discarded into the waters or on the beaches around the area.

And so the small grotto in the grounds of Cockenzie House were built from this ballast rock, and lined on the inside with seashells gathered from the East Lothian shoreline. It's a unique feature in an historic setting, with a magical quality all of its own when lit with candles, and one of the more unusual constructions in the whole of the Lothian area.

Take a private walking tour of Edinburgh to find out more unusual history!