New Year, New Town! Five Features of the New Town of Edinburgh

Edinburgh's New Town is an often unfairly overlooked side of the city, especially by visitors who (perhaps understandably) imagine from its name that it may be a 1980s shopping district.

In fact the New Town has over 250 years of its own history, style and culture, dating back to its origins as a residential expansion for wealthy citizens of Edinburgh when it was first constructed in the 1760s.

As well as offering a dedicated New Town tour, I always try to encourage visitors to explore areas of Edinburgh's New Town for themselves, and at the start of a whole new year, now is as good a time as any to highlight features that the New Town has to offer!

​So here's my must-see guide to New Town highlights... but to explore them in more detail, join me for a walking tour!

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DUNDAS HOUSE
Much of the original New Town has been converted for commercial use, and it's hard to get a sense of the style and grandeur that the city originally offered when confronted with Starbucks and Hard Rock Cafe...

​But Dundas House on St Andrew Square is one of the finest original buildings that remains publicly accessible, and it offers an astonishing glimpse into life for the uber-rich in the early years of the New Town project.

Laurence Dundas had been a self-made businessman. His father had owned a luckenbooth (a small stall or shop) on the Royal Mile, and Laurence Dundas had built his fortune from canny investments and business enterprises. 

In the 1760s he bought what he considered to be the prime location for his family's residence, on St Andrew Square. The space had originally been intended to be occupied by a church, but such was Dundas's influence in the city he was able to commandeer the site for his own property instead. The original villa property was designed by iconic architect William Chambers, who also designed Somerset House in London.

Dundas was later an early director of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and following his death the Royal Bank acquired the building Dundas had lived in. It remains the world headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland group, and is maintained as a public bank branch... which means it's open for visitors to check out during their visit!

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The banking hall itself is not actually part of the original house, but it is one of the grandest commercial spaces in the city even today, and gives a great sense of how much wealth and affluence could be found in eighteenth century Edinburgh. As a major banking city, it was finance which helped create the grand style of the New Town, and Dundas House is a great example of the style that such wealth could buy. 

The huge domed ceiling is cut with star-shaped skylights, which not only create a very dramatic visual effect, they also allowed huge amounts of natural light into the banking hall, which helped to give the Royal Bank a commercial advantage over some of its competitors, by allowing it to stay open later into the evening!

Today the building still serves as a bank, but even if you aren't going in to make use of its cash machines or banking facilities, take a few minutes to check out its iconic bank hall designed by architects Peddie and Kinnear.

DEAN VILLAGE
One of the Insta-friendly highlights of the New Town is this historic former mill town which originally lay well beyond the city limits of Edinburgh. When I first started taking tours around the area it was a guaranteed visitor-free zone, but with the rise of tourism and the takeover of Instagrammers, it's rare to explore this area is such solitude and peace today. (I blame the internet and tour guides. :) ) 

Dean Village provided one of the only original access routes into Edinburgh, crossing the steep valley cut by the Water of Leith via a narrow stone bridge. The river itself provided power to a series of industries along its length, and Dean Village - meaning 'the village in the valley' - was a mill town, where farmers brought grain to have it turned into flour to be exported into Edinburgh.

One of the most notable buildings in the village is the former guild of baxters (bread bakers) who built the building in 1675. You can find their emblem - representing paddles bearing loves of bread - around the area, along with sheaves of corn cut into some of the original warehouse structures.

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Another significant structure is Well Court, an 1880s housing development built by John Ritchie Findlay (proprietor of the Scotsman newspaper) as affordable housing in order to attract people back to the Dean Village after the industries had moved away in the 1830s. 

Built around a central courtyard, Well Court is a distinctive tenement style that had community spirit built into its structure, with a dedicated space for community events and activities. The well-used communal washing lines shows that the community is still alive and well in the Dean Village, and the area remains a popular residential suburb for people to enjoy the benefits of living in the city without being stuck right in the centre of town.

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CALTON HILL
Another of the highlights of the New Town of Edinburgh is Calton Hill, one of the three volcanic peaks to be found in the city centre.

Developed as the city's first public park in the 1720s, Calton Hill continues to offer visitors (and locals) a space to escape, with views across to the Old Town, Arthur's Seat, out to Leith, and over to the county of Fife, across the water to the north of Edinburgh. 

The hill also boasts one of the most iconic structures in Edinburgh, the National Monument. This unfinished memorial for the dead soldiers of the Napoleonic Wars was intedned to be a full recreation of the Parthenon in Athens, but was left incomplete when funding dried up. The memorial was designed by William Henry Playfair, who also built several other structures and monuments on the top of Calton Hill.

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The Nelson Monument is a telescope-shaped memorial to Admiral Nelson, a British naval hero, and you'll also find the original City Observatory building, now an art gallery with a restaurant space within its precincts, as well as a memorial cairn celebrating the campaign to re-establish an independent Scottish parliament.

THE SCOTT MONUMENT
Probably my favourite structure in the city, the Scott Monument celebrates the author Sir Walter Scott, best known for novels like Rob Roy and Ivanhoe. When Scott died in 1832, he was the most widely read British author of the age, and his memorial was paid for with nearly £17,000 of money donated by the readers of his books.

Designed by an architect named George Meikle Kemp, the monument remains the world's tallest monument to a writer, with a staircase up to four viewing platforms, the highest nearly 200ft above Princes Street Gardens.

Nicknamed the Gothic Rocket, for its style and shape, the there are over 60 statues on the monument representing Scottish historic figures as well as fictional characters from Scott's writing. The statue of Walter Scott at street level was carved by the sculptor John Steell. 

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PRINCES STREET GARDENS
Originally private gardens for the wealth residents who lived on Princes Street, Princes Street Gardens are some of the most popular public spaces in the city today.

At the western end of the gardens is the Ross Memorial Fountain, recently restored and renovated, with views up to Edinburgh Castle on top of its volcanic outcrop.

The valley in which the gardens sit today was at one time an artificial lake, and today the mainline railway runs along the bottom of the gardens, with a large outdoor stage area occasionally used for concerts (weather permitting!).

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Look out for a statue of Wojtek the bear, a Polish folk hero with an Edinburgh connection, a First World War memorial given as a gift from the people of America to Scotland, the world's oldest floral clock, and a small memorial to the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who was born in Edinburgh but died on an island in Samoa in the western Pacific Ocean...

Taken altogether, the New Town of Edinburgh represents a distinct contrast from the 'historic' Old Town side of the city, and is well worth exploring! (It's also arguably better for bars and restaurants than the Royal Mile area, too...)

Explore the New Town in more detail with my private city walking tours!