Edinburgh Audio Tour: Legends and Lanes of Old Town

Stops on this tour

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   Greyfriars Bobby Statue

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   Look for the small granite fountain by the curb with a life-size bronze little dog perched on top, staring out like he’s on permanent guard duty. This is the Greyfriars Bobby…Read moreShow less

   Look for the small granite fountain by the curb with a life-size bronze little dog perched on top, staring out like he’s on permanent guard duty. This is the Greyfriars Bobby Fountain... a polished granite column and bowl with bronze plaques, topped by Bobby, a Skye Terrier turned local legend. The story goes that after his owner, John Gray, died, Bobby kept watch over the grave for 14 years-through Edinburgh rain, wind, and the general Victorian urge to be dramatic-until Bobby himself died on January 14, 1872. The memorial was commissioned by Lady Burdett-Coutts of the RSPCA, and sculpted “from life” by William Brodie-who, at the same time, was busy making figures for the Scott Monument. It was unveiled in 1873, later became a top-tier listed monument... and is reputed to be Edinburgh’s smallest listed building. The water was shut off in 1957, then the fountain got some TLC in 1985. And that shiny nose? Please don’t rub it-“lucky” is not a conservation strategy. When you’re set, Grassmarket is a 5-minute walk heading south.

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   Grassmarket

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   On your right, look for the wide, open street-square lined with old stone buildings and busy pubs, with Edinburgh Castle looming dramatically on the rocky ridge straight ahead…Read moreShow less

   On your right, look for the wide, open street-square lined with old stone buildings and busy pubs, with Edinburgh Castle looming dramatically on the rocky ridge straight ahead above the rooftops. Welcome to the Grassmarket… a place that’s always been a little bit theatrical, mostly because it sits down in a natural dip in the land, like the city built itself a small amphitheater and then immediately filled it with noise, commerce, and trouble. Up there, the Castle looks like it’s supervising the whole scene… which, historically, it basically was. This stretch was already being talked about in records as far back as the 1300s-“new buildings under the castle.” By the late 1400s, it becomes one of Edinburgh’s main marketplaces. Think practical, not cute: cattle, horses, meat… and the particular perfume that comes with those products. The name “Grassmarket” likely nods to animals grazing in pens out toward the west end. By the early 1700s, even Daniel Defoe-yes, that Daniel Defoe-clocked this as a two-market kind of place: the Grassmarket and the Horse-market. Nearby streets were packed with wholesale traders dealing in the heavy-duty stuff-iron, tar, hemp, oils-supplies that kept the city running, and kept shopkeepers stocked. But the Grassmarket also had a second job… public entertainment. This was one of Edinburgh’s main execution grounds. Over near the traditional gallows site, there’s a memorial for more than a hundred Covenanters hanged in the grim years between 1661 and 1688, when loyalty tests turned deadly. And in 1736, the area helped set the stage for the Porteous Riots-ending with Captain Porteous being lynched by a furious mob. Edinburgh crowds, it turns out, did not always “use their indoor voices.” Then there’s the local legend who refuses to stay dead: Margaret-“Half-hangit Maggie”-Dickson. Hanged here in 1724, declared dead, packed off in a coffin… and she allegedly woke up on the way home. Scots law wouldn’t let them execute her twice for the same crime, so she walked free and lived for decades. There’s a pub named for her right here-because of course there is. In the 1800s, the Grassmarket turned into a tough place to live-crammed lodging houses, poverty, and an influx of Irish immigrants. Conditions got brutal: rooms packed tight, people locked in overnight, and inspections that sometimes made things worse before reforms finally capped overcrowding. By 1888, officials recorded seven lodging houses holding 414 people-numbers that sound less like housing and more like shipping. Today it’s cafés, pubs, and an “events zone,” reshaped with about £5 million of improvements in 2009-10-roughly £7 to £8 million now, or around $9 to $10 million USD. But even now… if you spot the darker paving marking the “shadow” of the gallows, the Grassmarket’s old edge is still right there in plain sight.

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