edinburgh-1951/-03_077

Transcription

HISTORICAL MONUMENTS (SCOTLAND) COMMISSION
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Not much military history is attached to the walls and ports, but they were probably effective enough for peace-time domestic purposes, such as the exaction of customs on goods coming to market and for checking the entry or evasion of criminals, lepers, or the plague-stricken. Somerset's army in 1544 forced an entry by the Nether Bow Port,1 and perhaps as a consequence repairs had to be made to "the ports and wallis" three years later.2 In the Reformation struggle of 1559 the walls could shelter the townsmen worsted in a skirmish with the French troops from Leith.3 In the civil war that marked the close of Queen Mary's reign and the minority of James VI measures were taken for the defence of the walls, which also at times suffered maltreatment by citizens.4 Once more when, in 1640, Oliver Cromwell's invasion threatened the capital the walls were prepared for resistance,5 but played no part in the campaign. In the Jacobite rising of 1715 the measures taken for defence prompted a citizen to write that "Our town is turned into a fortification." The same was done at the time of the "Forty-five" rising, but the Jacobites by a ruse entered at the West Bow, and the only opposition was from the Castle.

Already, however, wall and ports were taking on the character of a hindrance to free traffic, through a Government proposal in 1737 to remove the Nether Bow Port was strongly resisted. Then in 1764 a "Merchant Citizen" issued a pamphlet, voicing6 the resentment of merchants from outside at the vexatious stoppages and delays to which they were subjected in the search for smuggled goods. They "altogether decline" says the pamphlet, "to deal with the merchant shopkeepers of Edinburgh because there is a wall surrounding the city and Revenue officers and waiters stationed at all the Gates and Entries of the city night and day...to stop, detain and seize their goods at their pleasure, which is not done in any city, town or corporation in all Britain." The writer urges the people to keep their ports open day and night, to lay by the old gates as old lumber, and to make more ways of entrance into the town or even remove the walls altogether. In the same year as the publication of this pamphlet, the Nether Bow Port was at least removed to facilitate communication. Nothing more, however, was done for another twenty years, when in 1787 there was a clearance of the greater part of the ancient barriers, the rest of which suffered the same fate between 1827 and 1837. The only fragments to survive were the parts of the Flodden Wall and the Telfer Wall described in the Inventory Nos. 59 and 60).


4. DOMESTIC BUILDING FROM THE SIXTEENTH TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In modern Edinburgh a tenement implies a building of three or more storeys which contains a series of flats. In earlier times, however, the word "tenement": was used to mean a holding of land, while the building that stood upon it was usually called a "land," sometimes a "mansioun-land," and at other times a "lugeing" (lodging) or a "bigging" (building). In records of the 16th and 17th centuries such buildings are described as situated either on a street, or in wynds or closes7 - a wynd being a lane or thoroughfrare and close a cul-de-sac. As far as their outward appearance goes, Fig. 59 shows that in 1544-the date of illustration-even the larger houses in the burghs of Edinburgh and Canongate had no more than two storeys and an attic. The majority were thatched and the other rile-roofed. None of these houses exists to-day, but some information as to their accommodation and that of their immediate successors cn be gleaned from the protocol books and other records. In 1501, for example, Thomas Neilson inherited property in Niddrie's Wynd consisting of "a hall, chamber and working house (domum operarium) above, and two

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1 See p. 123. 2 B.R., ii (1528-1557), p. 130. 3 Diurnal, p. 54. 4 B.R., iii (1557-1571), p. 258; iv (1573-1589), pp. 78, 80, 82, 101 and 372. 5 B.T. viii (1641-1655), pp. 253 f. 6 The Paradeis Regain'd or the City at Liberty, etc. 7 A close is simply an enclosed place. The late Mr. Boog-Watson suggested that the wynds, apart from the few that had been thoroughfares from the beginning, were probably "closes" in the first instance. In his opinion the first houses to be erected upon the burghal holdings were semi-detached cottages of a single storey, on the free side of which ran a path or lane to give access to the arable ground in the yard behind. When the yards themselves came to be built over the lanes were extended, sometimes until they met a thoroughfare, but they remained private property and in many cases were closed by a gate. By use and wont some of the lanes became wynds or public thoroughfares.

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Transcriber's notes

There is a parentheses mark missing at the bottom of the first paragraph in the original copy, the right column, Nos. 59 and 60.

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M.McConnell

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