Ward The Pocket Guide to Edinburgh's Best Buildings

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-78885-767-3
Verlag: Birlinn
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten

As a world heritage site and one of the most visited cities in the world, Edinburgh boasts a huge range of buildings from all periods and in many different styles. In this book, architectural writer Robin Ward introduces 300 of the city's most fascinating places, from imposing public buildings such as galleries, museums, banking halls, churches and theatres to pubs, domestic dwellings, monuments and industrial architecture. Conveniently grouped by location, all areas of the city are covered, including suburbs. All are accessible by walking, cycling, public transport or car.

Robin Ward is an Edinburgh-based architecture critic, writer and graphic designer who was born and raised in Glasgow. He studied at Glasgow School of Art and subsequently worked for the BBC in London, and in Canada, where he was architecture critic for the Vancouver Sun. He has written a number of architectural guidebooks, including Exploring Glasgow, and co-wrote Exploring Vancouver.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ward, Robin

Leseproben

Tour A

Holyrood and the Old Town

A 1

Holyrood Abbey

Holyrood Park

This was the Augustinian Abbey of Holyrood (Holy Cross) founded in 1128 by King David I. Legend has it that while out hunting deer he was attacked and thrown from his horse by a stag. He seized its antlers. In a flash of sunlight they were transformed to a holy cross. That night, the king had a vision that he must build the abbey to give thanks. Over the next two centuries it was enlarged – more than twice the size seen today. Excavations in 1911 exposed foundations of long-lost transepts and a chancel.

In the 16th century, the abbey was looted and burned by the English, and the monastic regime ousted during the Protestant Reformation. The traceried east gable dates from Charles I’s Scottish coronation in 1633. James VII expelled the congregation and made the nave the Chapel Royal. A mob stripped it of Catholic symbols in 1688 when James, the last Stuart monarch, was deposed.

The roof collapsed in 1768. Victorian romantics thought the ruined nave sublime. It remains as they saw it, a Gothic ghost beside the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

A 2

The Palace of Holyroodhouse

Holyrood Park

The official residence in Scotland of the reigning British monarch who visits annually, hands out honours and hosts a garden party. But behind the ceremony and decorum there is a bloody story.

Holyroodhouse was conceived by James IV in 1501. James V added the Northwest Tower styled like a Loire château. The palace survived when Edinburgh was invaded in the 1540s – the ‘rough wooing’, an attempt by Henry VIII to have his son Edward marry Mary Queen of Scots and so end the Auld Alliance between France and Scotland.

Mary is the most romantic and ill-fated royal associated with the palace. It was here, in her chambers in the Northwest Tower, that assassins led by her jealous husband Lord Darnley stabbed to death her private secretary David Rizzio. Stains on the floor are said to be his blood.

In 1603, James VI became James I of England and took the Royal Court to London. Charles II reconstructed and revived Holyroodhouse, creating the symmetrical west front. Its Doric-columned entrance with flamboyant heraldry leads to a Renaissance-style courtyard and the royal apartments. The Long Gallery features portraits of Scottish monarchs. The fountain in the forecourt is a Victorian replica of the one erected for James V at Linlithgow Palace.

A 3

The Scottish Parliament

Canongate

Scotland’s old parliament ‘voted itself out of existence’ in 1707 when the Act of Union with England created the British state, with its parliament in London. Repatriation of the Scottish Parliament was approved by referendum in 1997. A design competition was won by Barcelona architects EMBT. Costs and criticism spiralled as the design evolved but it was a masterpiece in the making.

The organic plan grows out of the Old Town – a ‘dialogue across time’ architect Miralles said. Leaf and boat shapes symbolise the land and sea of Scotland. The Debating Chamber’s spectacular glulam (glue-laminated) oak trusses recall the 17th-century timber roof of Old Parliament Hall. The Canongate Wall is a collage of poetic quotations and stones from across the nation, with a sketch by Miralles of the Old Town. A 17th-century mansion, Queensberry House, was restored as part of the project.

Sustainable features include natural ventilation, renewable energy and green roofs, even beehives (the beeswax is used for official seals). The landscape, biodiverse with native plants and flowers, blends with historic Holyrood Park.

A 4

Dynamic Earth

Holyrood Road

A fabric-skinned pavilion like some prehistoric creature lodged in the shell of a 19th-century brewery. The brewery walls, visible on Queen’s Drive, were disguised as a castle to please Queen Victoria.

The style is High Tech with the roof cable-stayed from steel pylons. Exhibits inside feature Planet Earth. James Hutton, ‘the founder of modern geology’, lived nearby. Directly south are volcanic features that inspired him, Salisbury Crags and Arthur’s Seat.

A 5

White Horse Close

27 Canongate

Looks like a film set but the buildings are real enough, restored in the 1960s. The close was known for the White Horse Inn where stagecoaches departed to and arrived from London.

During the Jacobite rising of 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s officers lodged here while the prince occupied Holyroodhouse. The name of the close refers to a white horse said to have been stabled here for Mary Queen of Scots.

A 6

Adam Smith’s Panmure House

4 Lochend Close, Canongate

Built in 1691 when the Canongate was a rural, aristocratic suburb of the Old Town. The owner was the Earl of Panmure, a Jacobite who forfeited the property to the British state after the failed rising of 1715.

In 1778, Adam Smith, author of , moved in. Among those drawn to his ‘salons’ were architect Robert Adam, chemist Joseph Black, geologist James Hutton and philosopher Dugald Stewart.

Their spirit of enquiry inspired the restoration of the house for Heriot-Watt University in 2018 as a forum for economic and social debate. Smith’s elaborate tomb can be found in Canongate Kirkyard.

A 7

112 Canongate

This Saltire Society Housing Design Award winner in 2000 was built for the Old Town Housing Association. Timber siding and harled walls evoke the past, along with upper rooms cantilevered from the façade to gain floor space, a typical feature of medieval housing in Edinburgh. The typographic message, ‘A nation is forged in the hearth of poetry’, recalls instructive texts seen on buildings in the Old Town.

In nearby Dunbar’s Close is a 17th-century style garden such as would have been enjoyed by Canongate’s aristocratic residents.

A 8

Scottish Poetry Library

5 Crichton’s Close, Canongate

Award-winning architecture in an alley of mixed-up buildings (tenements and an old brewery). Outdoor steps were used as seats for readings – poetry . Unfortunately, this liberating feature was lost when the library, needing more space on the tight site, was enlarged in 2015.

A 9

Canongate Kirk

153 Canongate

‘Canongate’ refers not to a gate, but from the Norse word for ‘street’ where walked the canons of Holyrood Abbey. James VII built the kirk in 1688 for the congregation he evicted from the abbey which he wanted for the Chapel Royal. Funds were from merchant Thomas Moodie, noted on architect James Smith’s Dutch-gabled façade.

Above the rose window is the coat of arms of William of Orange, who took the British throne from James VII. The antlers on top of the gable symbolise the stag in the founding story of Holyrood Abbey. The interior is festooned with royal and regimental banners and flags, this being the Kirk of Holyroodhouse and Edinburgh Castle.

The statue of poet Robert Fergusson striding past the kirk was placed here in 2004. Fergusson was buried in the kirkyard in an unmarked grave. Robert Burns found it ‘unnoticed and unknown’ in 1787 and paid for a headstone inscribed with an elegy he wrote.

A 10

Canongate Tolbooth

163 Canongate

Built in 1591, this was the town hall, jail and courthouse of the old Burgh of Canongate which was absorbed by Edinburgh in 1856. The style is Franco-Scottish – the architecture of the Auld Alliance. The ‘forestair’ from the street led to the council chamber and courtroom; the jail was in the tower.

On the façade is the burgh’s coat of arms dated 1128 (when...