The Hidden Secrets of the Royal Mile
Back in the heady days of summer 2020, when lockdown was a novelty rather than a way of life, I decided to use a couple of big walks to visit all the closes of the Royal Mile. A “close” (with a hard S) is a narrow alleyway running between buildings, and the historic heart of Edinburgh is packed with them. This amazing old map from the National Library of Scotland collections shows the structure of the old town in the 17th century, and in many ways it hasn’t much changed. The central street – now known as the Royal Mile – runs down the ridge between the royal buildings of Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace, while the closes peel off down the sides of the hill.
Detail from a 1647 map of Edinburgh showing the closes - click on the map to view it in full. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Scores of these ancient routes still make up the map of the area today, with many of them even still bearing the same names they’ve had for centuries. Some are locked up behind gates (as many would have been in the past) but most are open to the main road, so I went down 56 different closes to see what I would find. There’s a lot to uncover, from the ruins of 16th-century mansions to intriguing political scandals.
Some of my favourite discoveries became a walking tour of the hidden secrets of the Royal Mile, featuring the places and stories tucked away behind the main road. (You can download it as an hour-long virtual tour here, and in the future I’ll run them in person.) But it would take days to do a walking tour including every close on the Mile (although I would love to do it – if anyone ever fancies hiring me for that job, hit me up!) So here’s a look at some of the other gems I found that didn’t make it into the tour.
Just after you pass the Tron Kirk and cross South Bridge, Niddry Street runs downhill to the Cowgate at the bottom. Inside its bars and clubs, you can walk into the underground vaults within the bridge, which were once the literal underbelly of the city. They would once have been dingy caverns home to some of the city’s destitute people, as well as underground havens for people who wanted to hide their nefarious dealings. These days it’s normally full of people having fun on nights out, and Edinburgh’s dark history brings ghost tours (well, not literally these days, but in normal times!)
Inside St Cecilia’s Hall. Image via Wikimedia Commons
At the bottom of the hill on your left sits a real Edinburgh hidden gem: St Cecilia’s Hall. Since 1763, the building has been a Baptist church, a Freemasons Hall, a school and a ballroom before finally returning to its original purpose when it was restored in 2017. From the narrow street it looks unassuming, but inside lies an 18th-century concert hall and a fascinating museum of Edinburgh University’s collection of hundreds of musical instruments going back to the 16th century. In normal times, it’s open to the public for free and it’s well worth an hour or two of your time.
Just on the other side of the Royal Mile, an archway leads into Carrubbers Close. Although the building it runs through today is Victorian, the close itself is centuries old and probably takes its name from William de Carriberis, a merchant who lived near here in the 1450s. The buildings may have changed, but over the years this little street has seen its fair share of action.
Prince Charles Edward Stuart, painted at Holyrood Palace in 1745 by Allan Ramsay. In the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland
Back in the 1740s, the congregation of Old St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – which still sits here, in a newer building – were mostly staunch Jacobites who supported Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s attempts to place his family back on the throne. Before his defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 his rebellion came close to succeeding, and in 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie set up court for six weeks at Holyrood Palace down the hill. The atmosphere in Carrubbers Close and its church must have been electric, and some of the people who worshipped here would have been among the crowd of thousands that lined the streets to watch the Jacobite army and the prince ride in.
Allan Ramsay, poet, by William Aikman in 1722
Less than ten years before the dramatic events of the Jacobite uprising, poet Allan Ramsay (father of the painter who did the above portrait) attempted to open a theatre in Carrubbers Close. He was a bit of a cultural pioneer in Edinburgh – in 1726 he had also opened the country’s first circulating library, renting books out from his bookshop near St Giles Cathedral. Sadly, 1730s Edinburgh wasn’t ready for the licentious and immoral world of theatre, and opposition from the Kirk and polite society forced it to close after just a year. Allan Ramsay is remembered nowadays as an early defender of the Scots language and a deeply influential writer, and perhaps he lived just a bit too early for his cultural ambitions. I hope it would please him to know that Edinburgh these days is a world capital of theatre and host to the world’s largest arts festival. His son (confusingly also called Allan Ramsay) became one of the most significant portrait painters of his day– see his portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stuart above – so at least the stuffy folk of 18th-century Edinburgh couldn’t keep the arts down!
As you pass the World’s End pub on the corner of St Mary’s Street, you’re leaving what was historically “Edinburgh” and heading toward the Canongate. Nowadays this is just the bottom section of the Royal Mile (and very much part of Edinburgh), but until the 19th century in was a separate burgh. While Edinburgh was packed densely inside its city walls, building higher and becoming ever more crowded in the 17th century, the Canongate lay outside the city wall and had space to breathe. It was a fashionable place for townhouses for the wealthy, with sprawling gardens and grand homes. If you zoom in on the right-hand side of the 1647 map of Edinburgh, you can see how much less dense the Canongate was!
Moray House is a wonderful surviving example. As you walk downhill, you’ll see its obelisk-shaped gateposts on your right (if you look really closely on the map linked above, you can even spot them there in 1647!). The original house dates from 1625, and its large size and grand balcony tell you that this was a home for important people. It came into the hands of the Countess of Moray in the 1640s (hence its current name), and by the early 1700s the tenant was James Ogilvy, Earl of Seafield and Lord Chancellor of Scotland. He was the man tasked with bringing about the union with England in 1707, a project that was deeply unpopular with the people of Scotland in general and with many in the political establishment (and, of course, this is a question that hasn’t gone away to this day).
Ogilvy used to meet with some of his supporters in the summerhouse in the Moray House gardens, and it’s even said that some of the signatures to the Act of Union were added there after an anti-union riot drove the politicians from the old parliament by St Giles. The little summerhouse has since been moved, but you can still see it against the wall of the Moray House car park off Holyrood Road.
Moray House became a teacher training college in 1848, and teachers are still trained there by the University of Edinburgh today. Although the original building might be nearly 400 years old, it’s become a part of modern Scotland as a centre of excellence that turns out some of the best-trained teachers in the country.
Anchor Close, photo by me
Places like Moray House and the hundreds of other ancient buildings of the Old Town provide tangible links to the history of Edinburgh. One of the things I love most about living in such an old city is the sense of place – when you walk down many of the streets in the city centre, you’re walking down routes that people in Edinburgh have used for more than 500 years. Generations of people have lived in the buildings through centuries of political drama and social change, and I think it’s pretty cool that we can still follow in their footsteps today.
If you’d like to find out more and follow me down a few of the closes, you can download my virtual tour of the Royal Mile here. You can also find lots of great information from Edinburgh World Heritage, including walking trails you can explore while you take some daily exercise (assuming you live here!)
Where are your favourite hidden spots in Edinburgh? And what other corners of the city would you like to learn more about?
Thanks for reading! Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions for topics you’d like to see me write about here. If you enjoy reading these posts, please consider sharing them with other people and following me on instagram. You can also leave something in my tip jar if you’re able. I’ll be back with another post next Friday! Hannah x