Broughton, Edinburgh
Broughton is an ancient feudal barony, today within the City of Edinburgh, Scotland, once known for its witchcraft. The feudal barony of Broughton in the 16th and 17th centuries was in the hands of the Bellenden family, who had made their money in the legal profession. Sir John Bellenden of Broughton, Knt., present at the Coronation of King James VI in 1567, possessed the barony of Broughton, with the additional superiorities of the Canongate and North Leith, having therein nearly two thousand vassals, according to Sir John Scott of Scotstarvit, writing in 1754. Broughton passed to Sir Lewis Bellenden, Knt. Lord Justice-Clerk and a Lord of Session, cited as one of the Ruthven Raiders and to William Bellenden, 1st Lord Bellenden of Broughton. Scattered houses on the farmlands which made up Broughton gave way to more general housing in the century prior to the formation of Edinburgh's New Town which adjoined the parish of Broughton, its modern borders are defined as being Leith Walk in the south east, Broughton Street in the south west, Broughton Road in the north west and McDonald Road in the north east.
Moving clockwise from south east, Broughton is bordered by Greenside and Calton, the New Town and Pilrig. Broughton's main thoroughfare is Broughton Street; the street has many independent speciality shops. Broughton is today at the centre of Edinburgh's "pink triangle", an area of the city with a number of gay bars and clubs. Edinburgh's first traffic lights were installed in Broughton Street in 1928; the Scottish folk band Silly Wizard were based for some time in a flat located at 69 Broughton Street. Phil Cunningham, member of Silly Wizard and younger brother of the band's founder, Johnny Cunningham, lived in Broughton; the Broughton Spurtle: Broughton's Free Independent Stirrer is a community newspaper for Broughton and adjacent areas in north-east and central Edinburgh. It has no political, religious or commercial affiliation, it reports hyperlocally relevant political, environment, licensing, cultural and plain odd stories, tries to be rude to all sides without fear or favour during elections.
Speaking, it does not see eye to eye with the Edinburgh Evening News. Gayfield House is a Category A listed building at Edinburgh. Father and son builders Charles and William Butler built Gayfield House between 1761 and 1764 as a stylish country villa combining Scots Palladian with Dutch details and a touch of French decor, within walking distance of the crowded Old Town of Edinburgh. In 1765 the Butlers sold it for £ 2,000 to Lord Erskine and his wife Lady Charlotte Hope. In 1767, after Lord Erskine's death it was sold to the Earl of Leven. An entry in the Scots Magazine in 1766 states: "Marriage. June 10th. At Gayfield, near Edinburgh, the Earl of Hopetoun to Lady Betty Leven." A late 18th century print shows Gayfield House standing in attractive grounds, surrounded by fields and by orchards, bounded to the South East by Leith Walk. The fortunes of the house declined in the 19th century as Edinburgh expanded. Loss of garden ground and the ever-approaching tenements around made it less attractive as a private house.
In 1873, it was sold to William Williams as Edinburgh's New Veterinary College. This closed in 1904 and it was bought by a merchant who stored manure in the downstairs rooms. After World War 1 it was used as a laundry which manufactured ammonia and bleach. In the 1970s it was used as a garage and for car repairs, a hole was opened in its facade and the basement was used as a garage. By 1990 it had fallen into disrepair, was vandalised and much was stolen including carved wood and gesso chimneypieces. A roofer Trevor Harding bought it in 1991, renovated much of it and sub-divided the interior into basement and upper floors, he sold it in 2013. Gayfield Square Police station, featured in the Inspector Rebus stories written by Edinburgh-based writer Ian Rankin, is located on Gayfield Square in the south east of Broughton. Broughton High School was located in Broughton, but is now located further west in Comely Bank; the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid undertook part of his formal education at Broughton High.
Schools still located in Broughton include Drummond Community High School, Broughton Primary School and St Marys RC Primary School. 8 7, 14, 49 1, 4, 19, 26, 44 10, 11, 12, 16, 22, 25 Edinburgh Trams operate services to & from York Place tram stop, near the top of Broughton Street. This is the eastern terminus for the route. Bartholomew's Chronological map of Edinburgh Broughton Spurtle Broughton Primary School
Methodist Church of Great Britain
The Methodist Church of Great Britain is a Protestant Christian denomination in Britain and the mother church to Methodists worldwide. It participates in the World Methodist Council, the World Council of Churches and other ecumenical associations. Methodism began through the work of John Wesley, who led an evangelical revival in 18th century Britain. An Anglican priest, Wesley adopted unconventional and controversial practices, such as open-air preaching, to reach factory labourers and newly urbanised masses uprooted from their traditional village culture at the start of the Industrial Revolution, his preaching centred upon the universality of God's grace for all, the effect of faith on character and the possibility of perfection in love during this life. He organised the new converts locally and in a "Connexion" across Britain. Following Wesley's death, the Methodist revival became a separate church and ordained its own ministers. In the 19th century, the Wesleyan Methodist Church experienced many secessions, with the largest of the offshoots being the Primitive Methodists.
The main streams of Methodism were reunited in 1932. Methodist circuits, containing several local churches, are gathered into thirty-one districts; the supreme governing body of the church is the annual Methodist Conference. The 2009 British Social Attitudes Survey found that around 800,000 people, or 1.29 per cent of the British population, identified as Methodist. In October 2016, active membership stood at 188,000, representing a 7.45 per cent decline from the 2014 figure. Methodism is the fourth-largest Christian group in Britain. Around 202,000 people attend a Methodist church service each week, while 490,000 to 500,000 take part in some other form of Methodist activity, such as youth work and community events organised by local churches; the movement which would become the Methodist Church began in the mid-18th century within the Church of England. A small group of students, including John Wesley, Charles Wesley and George Whitefield, met at Oxford University, they living a holy life. Other students mocked them, saying they were the "Holy Club" and "the Methodists", being methodical and exceptionally detailed in their Bible study and disciplined lifestyle.
The first Methodist movement outside the Church of England was associated with Howell Harris, who led the Welsh Methodist revival. This was to become the Calvinistic Methodist Church. Another branch of the Methodist revival was under the ministry of George Whitefield, resulting in the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion; the largest branch of Methodism in England was organised by John Wesley. He formed small classes in which his followers would receive religious guidance and intensive accountability in their personal lives. Wesley appointed itinerant evangelists to travel and preach as he did and to care for these groups of people, it is a tribute to Wesley's powers of oratory and organisational skills that the term Methodism is today assumed to mean Wesleyan Methodism unless otherwise specified. Theologically, Wesley held to the "Arminian" view that salvation is available to all people, in contrast to the "Calvinist" ideas of election and predestination that were accepted by the Calvinistic Methodists.
Methodist preachers were famous for their enthusiastic sermons and accused of fanaticism. During Wesley's lifetime, many members of England's established church feared that new doctrines promulgated by the Methodists, such as the necessity of a new birth for salvation, of justification by faith and of the constant and sustained action of the Holy Spirit upon the believer's soul, would produce ill effects upon weak minds. Theophilus Evans, an early critic of the movement wrote that it was "the natural Tendency of their Behaviour, in Voice and Gesture and horrid Expressions, to make People mad". In one of his prints, William Hogarth attacked Methodists as "enthusiasts" full of "Credulity and Fanaticism". Other attacks against the Methodists were physically violent—Wesley was nearly murdered by a mob at Wednesbury in 1743; the Methodists thrived despite the attacks against them. As Wesley and his colleagues preached around the country they formed local societies and organised through Wesley's leadership and conferences of preachers.
Wesley insisted that Methodists attend their local parish church as well as Methodist meetings. In 1784, Wesley made provision for the continuance as a corporate body after his death of the'Yearly Conference of the People called Methodists', he nominated 100 people and declared them to be its members and laid down the method by which their successors were to be appointed. The Conference has remained the governing body of Methodism since; as his societies multiplied, elements of an ecclesiastical system were successively adopted, the breach between Wesley and the Church of England widened. In 1784, Wesley responded to the shortage of priests in the American colonies due to the American Revolutionary War by ordaining preachers for America with power to administer the sacraments. Wesley's actions precipitated the Church of England. British Methodism separated from the Church of England soon after the dea
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic or Scots Gaelic, sometimes referred to as Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish. Most of modern Scotland was once Gaelic-speaking, as evidenced by Gaelic-language placenames. In the 2011 census of Scotland, 57,375 people reported as able to speak Gaelic, 1,275 fewer than in 2001; the highest percentages of Gaelic speakers were in the Outer Hebrides. There are revival efforts, the number of speakers of the language under age 20 did not decrease between the 2001 and 2011 censuses. Outside Scotland, Canadian Gaelic is spoken in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Scottish Gaelic is not an official language of either the United Kingdom. However, it is classed as an indigenous language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which the British government has ratified, the Gaelic Language Act 2005 established a language development body, Bòrd na Gàidhlig.
Aside from "Scottish Gaelic", the language may be referred to as "Gaelic", pronounced or in English. "Gaelic" may refer to the Irish language. Scottish Gaelic is distinct from Scots, the Middle English-derived language varieties which had come to be spoken in most of the Lowlands of Scotland by the early modern era. Prior to the 15th century, these dialects were known as Inglis by its own speakers, with Gaelic being called Scottis. From the late 15th century, however, it became common for such speakers to refer to Scottish Gaelic as Erse and the Lowland vernacular as Scottis. Today, Scottish Gaelic is recognised as a separate language from Irish, so the word Erse in reference to Scottish Gaelic is no longer used. Gaelic was believed to have been brought to Scotland, in the 4th–5th centuries CE, by settlers from Ireland who founded the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata on Scotland's west coast in present-day Argyll.:551:66 However, archaeologist Dr Ewan Campbell has argued that there is no archaeological or placename evidence of a migration or takeover.
This view of the medieval accounts is shared by other historians. Regardless of how it came to be spoken in the region, Gaelic in Scotland was confined to Dál Riata until the eighth century, when it began expanding into Pictish areas north of the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde. By 900, Pictish appears to have become extinct replaced by Gaelic.:238–244 An exception might be made for the Northern Isles, where Pictish was more supplanted by Norse rather than by Gaelic. During the reign of Caustantín mac Áeda, outsiders began to refer to the region as the kingdom of Alba rather than as the kingdom of the Picts. However, though the Pictish language did not disappear a process of Gaelicisation was under way during the reigns of Caustantín and his successors. By a certain point during the 11th century, all the inhabitants of Alba had become Gaelicised Scots, Pictish identity was forgotten. In 1018, after the conquest of the Lothians by the Kingdom of Scotland, Gaelic reached its social, cultural and geographic zenith.:16–18 Colloquial speech in Scotland had been developing independently of that in Ireland since the eighth century.
For the first time, the entire region of modern-day Scotland was called Scotia in Latin, Gaelic was the lingua Scotica.:276:554 In southern Scotland, Gaelic was strong in Galloway, adjoining areas to the north and west, West Lothian, parts of western Midlothian. It was spoken to a lesser degree in north Ayrshire, the Clyde Valley and eastern Dumfriesshire. In south-eastern Scotland, there is no evidence that Gaelic was widely spoken. Many historians mark the reign of King Malcom Canmore as the beginning of Gaelic's eclipse in Scotland, his wife Margaret of Wessex spoke no Gaelic, gave her children Anglo-Saxon rather than Gaelic names, brought many English bishops and monastics to Scotland.:19 When Malcolm and Margaret died in 1093, the Gaelic aristocracy rejected their anglicised sons and instead backed Malcolm's brother Donald Bàn. Donald had spent 17 years in Gaelic Ireland and his power base was in the Gaelic west of Scotland, he was the last Scottish monarch to be buried on Iona, the traditional burial place of the Gaelic Kings of Dàl Riada and the Kingdom of Alba.
However, during the reigns of Malcolm Canmore's sons, Alexander I and David I, Anglo-Norman names and practices spread throughout Scotland south of the Forth–Clyde line and along the northeastern coastal plain as far north as Moray. Norman French displaced Gaelic at court; the establishment of royal burghs throughout the same area under David I, attracted large numbers of foreigners speaking Old English. This was the beginning of Gaelic's status as a predominantly rural language in Scotland.:19-23 Clan chiefs in the northern and western parts of Scotland continued to support Gaelic bards who remained a central feature of court life there. The semi-independent Lordship of the Isles in the Hebrides and western coastal mainland remained Gaelic since the language's recovery there in the 12th century, providing a political foundation for cultural prestige down to the end of the 15th century.:553-6By the mid-14th century what came to be called Scots emerged as the official language of government and law.:139 Scotland's emergent nat
Scottish Ambulance Service
The Scottish Ambulance Service is the NHS Ambulance Services Trust, part of NHS Scotland, which serves all of Scotland's population. Uniquely, the Scottish Ambulance Service is considered a special health board and is funded directly by the Health and Social Care Directorates of the Scottish Government, it is the sole public emergency medical service covering Scotland's mainland and islands. In 1948, the newly formed National Health Service contracted two voluntary organisations, the St Andrew's Ambulance Association and the British Red Cross, to jointly provide a national ambulance provision for Scotland, known as the St Andrew's and Red Cross Scottish Ambulance Service; the British Red Cross withdrew from the service in 1967. In 1974, with the reorganisation of the National Health Service, ambulance provision in Scotland was taken over by the NHS, with the organisational title being shortened to the now-current Scottish Ambulance Service. St. Andrew's First Aid, the trading name of St. Andrew's Ambulance Association, continues as a voluntary organisation and provides first aid training and provision in a private capacity.
The Scottish Ambulance Service now continues in its current form as one of the largest emergency medical providers in the UK, employing more than 4,000 staff in a variety of roles and responding to 740,631 emergency incidents in 2015/2016 alone. The service, like the rest of the National Health Service is free at point of access and is utilised by the public and healthcare professionals alike. Employing 1,300 paramedic staff, a further 1,200 technicians, the accident and emergency service is accessed through the public 999 system. Ambulance responses are now prioritised on patient requirement; the Scottish Ambulance Service maintains three command and control centres in Scotland, which facilitate handling of 999 calls and dispatch of ambulances. These three centres have handle over 800,000 calls per year; the AMPDS system is used for call prioritisation, provides post-dispatch instructions to callers allowing for medical advice to be given over the phone, prior to ambulance arrival. Clinical staff are present to provide tertiary triage.
Co-located with the Ambulance Control Centres are patient transport booking and control services, which handle 1 million patient journeys per year. The Scottish Ambulance Service maintains a varied fleet of around 1,500 vehicles; this includes Accident and Emergency ambulances single-response vehicles such as cars and small vans for paramedics, patient-transport ambulances which come in the form of adapted minibuses and support vehicles for major incidents and events, specialist vehicles such as 4x4s and tracked vehicles for difficult access. The unique geography of Scotland, which includes urban centres such as Edinburgh and Glasgow, areas of low-population such as Grampian and the Highlands, the Island communities mean that fleet provision has to be flexible and include different approaches to vehicle construction. In the past, 4x4-build ambulances on van chassis have been used in more rural areas, traditional van-conversions in more urban. With a large fleet upgrade project being commissioned in 2016, the business case was made to move to a box-body on chassis build, to provide some flexibility and more resilient parts procurement.
Most of these replacement ambulances have been based on either Mercedes or Volkswagen chassis, with a mixture of automatic or manual transmissions. The equipment used on board Scottish Ambulance Service vehicles broadly falls in line with NHS Scotland and allows for intraoperability in most cases. Equipment is replaced at regular service intervals; the uniform falls in line with the NHS Scotland National Uniform standard, in keeping with the uniform standard described by the National Ambulance Uniform Procurement group in 2016. Amongst cost and comfort considerations, all Scottish Ambulance Service Staff now wear the national uniform which comprises a dark green trouser / shirt combination. Personal Protective Equipment are issued to all staff and denote rank / clinical rank by way of epaulette and helmet markings; the national headquarters are in west side of Edinburgh and there are five divisions within the Service, namely: The Patient Transport Service carries over 1.3 million patients every year.
This service is provided to patients who are physically or medically unfit to travel to hospital out-patient appointments by any other means can still make their appointments. The service handles non-emergency admissions, transport of palliative care patients and a variety of other specialised roles. Patient Transport Vehicles come in a variety of forms and are staffed by Ambulance Care Assistants, whom work
Scottish Fire and Rescue Service
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is the national fire and rescue service of Scotland. It was formed by the merger of eight regional fire services in the country on 1 April 2013, it thus became the largest fire brigade in the United Kingdom, surpassing the London Fire Brigade After a consultation, the Scottish Government confirmed on 8 September 2011 that a single fire and rescue service would be created in Scotland to replace the eight existing services. Following further consultation on the detailed operation of the service, the Police and Fire Reform Bill was published on 17 January 2012. After scrutiny and debate by the Scottish Parliament, the legislation was approved on 27 June 2012; the Bill duly received royal assent as the Police and Fire Reform Act 2012. This Act created Police Scotland in place of the previous eight regional police forces; the mergers were effective from 1 April 2013. Eight months after the consolidation, an internal report said the reorganisation had not negatively affected operational response.
The service is headquartered in Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire, which houses a national training centre opened in January 2013. There are a further three service delivery centres in the east and north of the country. On 16 August 2012 the Scottish Government confirmed the first chief fire officer of the new service would be Alasdair Hay acting chief fire officer of Tayside Fire and Rescue Service, following an open recruitment exercise. Pat Watters, former president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, was announced as chair of the service, an appointment to run for three years from September 2012. Members of the SFRS Board appointed in October 2012 were Watters, Bob Benson, James Campbell, Kirsty Darwent, Marieke Dwarshuis, Michael Foxley, Robin Iffla, Bill McQueen, Sid Patten, Neil Pirie, Martin Togneri and Grant Thoms; the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service attended 25,002 fires in 2014/15. The service delivers a preventative programme, with 65,343 free home fire safety visits conducted in 2015/16.
As well as fighting fires, the service attends tens of thousands of specialist services such as road traffic collisions, water rescues and flooding incidents. In 2014/15 it attended 10,740 non-fire incidents; the service works alongside other emergency services during flooding events to ensure the safety of communities and rescue people in difficulty, with specialist swift water rescue teams positioned on major waterways and areas of activity. Firefighters are called out to water and boat rescues. For example, during Storm Frank in December 2015 the SFRS received 350 flood related calls in the space of six days. In 2015 the SFRS were called out to 78 wildfire incidents in total, with over half of those taking place in the north of Scotland. In 2015 a national trial was launched, in partnership with the Scottish Ambulance Service, which has seen firefighters at certain stations receive enhanced CPR training aimed at increasing survival rates for people who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.
As of March 2016, the SFRS operates 356 stations throughout Scotland. Stations are split into three categories: Wholetime: A station with full-time firefighters. Retained: Part-time, on a call-out basis and predominantly based in some of the more rural areas of Scotland. Volunteer: On a call-out basis and predominantly based in some of the more remote villages and islands; the most northerly station is Baltasound on the Shetland Islands. The most southerly is a volunteer station in the village of Drummore in Galloway; the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service National Training Centre opened in January 2013. The facility in Cambuslang features a mock town with realistic motorways, railway tracks and buildings, including a multi-storey tenement structure; the following services were merged to create the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service: Central Scotland Fire and Rescue Service and Galloway Fire and Rescue Service, Fife Fire and Rescue Service, Grampian Fire and Rescue Service and Islands Fire and Rescue Service and Borders Fire and Rescue Service, Strathclyde Fire and Rescue, Tayside Fire and Rescue Service.
The number of control rooms handling 999 calls was reduced from eight to three. The consolidation of regional call centres has resulted in a number of dispatching errors. For example, in December 2016 a crew from Raasay was mobilised to an incident on Skye – a journey that would have required taking their fire engine on a ferry – despite an alternative crew being able to reach Skye directly via a road bridge. On another occasion, a crew from Beauly was sent to a blaze 10 miles away in Dingwall as the dispatcher was unaware Dingwall had its own fire station, her Majesty's Fire Service Inspectorate for Scotland Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland List of British firefighters killed in the line of duty Official website BBC news report, 29 March 2013: Why Grampian is losing its unusual white fire engines, other questions... Consultation document: Keeping Scotland Safe and Strong: A Consultation on Reforming Police and Fire and Rescue Services in Scotland Police and Fire Reform Bill
Polwarth, Edinburgh
Polwarth is a residential area of Edinburgh, Scotland. It is bounded by Bruntsfield and Merchiston to the east and south and Dalry to the north, Fountainbridge to the north and east, Craiglockhart to the west; the Union Canal flows through Polwarth on its way from Edinburgh to Falkirk. Although within the boundary of Merchiston Community Council, Harrison Park – on the north bank of the canal – is taken to be part of Polwarth. Behind the tenements at the north of the park runs a footpath, track bed for the main line of the Caledonian Railway en route to the now-closed Princes Street railway station in the centre of the city. There was once a Merchiston Station on this line near the park
Bruntsfield
Bruntsfield is an area of Edinburgh, about a mile south-west of the city centre. In feudal times, it fell within the barony of Colinton; the modern district of Bruntsfield lies west of Bruntsfield Links, beyond which lies the district of Marchmont. Merchiston is to Tollcross to the north. To the south and east lies the former estate of Greenhill, to the south Morningside; the estate built on land belonging to Bruntsfield House is called Marchmont, which the Warrender family began feuing in 1872. Many of the street names reflect the association with that family; the whole area lay within the Burgh Muir of Edinburgh, from which a former farm Burghmuirhead took its name which passed to a small area within Bruntsfield. The Burgh Muir stretched all the way through from the present-day Meadows to the Braid Burn at the foot of the northern slopes of the Pentland Hills; the junction where Bruntsfield meets Burghmuirhead on the road to Morningside is popularly known as "Holy Corner" from its cluster of Victorian churches.
Bruntsfield Links is home to a pitch and putt golf course which serves as a reminder that it was one of the earliest places where golf was played in the Edinburgh area. The Links continue north east to Melville Drive where they meet The Meadows, a park formed after the old Burgh Loch was drained in the 19th century. At the southern end of the links, near Bruntsfield House, a sunken area formed by a former quarry is known locally as Tumbler's Hollow; the original name for the area was "Brounysfelde" or Brown's Fields, after the owner of Bruntsfield House, built on a pocket of land granted by the Crown within the Burgh Muir. A note in appendix 2 of the Great Seal of Scotland, 1306–1424, records a 1381 charter from the reign of Robert II which grants to William Lauder the lands of "Burrowmure in Edinburghshire", which had belonged to Richard Broun of Boroumore, he was the elder brother of Alan de Lawedre of the Haltoun House family, in a further charter of the Great Seal of 4 June 1382, Alan succeeded his brother William de Lawedre in the lands of "Boroughmuir".
It appears from subsequent charters that the Lauders acquired "Bruntisfield" at about the same time, unless it was all part and parcel of the 1381 acquisition. Sir Alexander Lauder of Blyth, Provost of Edinburgh, acquired from his father, Sir Alexander Lauder of Haltoun, Knt. in August 1497 "the lands of Brounisfeld, with the manor-house and gardens, herbarium, etc. except for one perticate of land at the east end, adjoining the ditch thereof, in the common muir of Edinburgh." J. Stewart-Smith states that "Bruntsfield Manor", or as it is known today, Bruntsfield House, had been the dower house of each successive bride of the Lauders of Haltoun for 226 years. Sir William Lauder of Haltoun invested his son, Sir Alexander Lauder, Knt. younger of Haltoun and Sheriff Principal of Edinburgh, his mother in life-rent in Bruntsfield in 1587, they resided in Bruntsfield Manor, being estranged from the laird of Haltoun. They rebuilt the mansion house. In 1603 Sir Alexander Lauder sold it to John Fairlie of the family of Braid.
Fairlie carried out extensive work to the original building, incorporated in the present mansion. His great-grandson, William Fairlie of Brounsfield, was still in possession after the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots, he sold Brounisfield to George Warrender of Lochend – Baillie and afterwards Lord Provost of Edinburgh – in July 1695, that family were still in possession in 1900. Until just before the Second World War the Union flag flew over the house whenever the family were in residence. By 1915 the feuing of the Bruntsfield Estate Marchmont was complete and no more than seven acres around the house remained in possession of the family; the carriage drive from Whitehouse Loan which swept round the now demolished Victorian wing and along the Lime Walk to the stables with their own entrance close to the twentieth century putting green. Bruntsfield House passed into Council ownership and since the 1970s has been incorporated into James Gillespie's High School as the school's main admin block; the house was categorised as a Listed Building by Historic Scotland in the early days of that agency.
Bruntsfield was home to other mansions, not least that of Wrychtishousis on a site adjacent to present-day Gillespie Crescent. It was replaced by Gillespie's Hospital, built 1803-1805; the site is now occupied by offices of the Royal Blind Asylum and apartments for the elderly run by the Viewpoint Housing Association. One conspicuous building is the original Boroughmuir School at Viewpark off Whitehouse Loan, before that school moved to nearby Viewforth in 1914; the building became James Gillespie's School for Girls until it was transformed into a new comprehensive school built on the grounds of Bruntsfield House in 1973. After serving as an annexe to a number of schools over the years, the Viewpark building has been converted into student residences; the area is affluent, with several restaurants and numerous small shops, many of which are gift shops. The housing is in the form of high-quality tenements, interspersed with some large villas; the area is served by the nearby secondary, Boroughmuir High School.
The area is popular with students due to its proximity to a major campus of Napier University. Bruntsfield falls in the Church of Scotland parishes of Barclay Viewforth Church and Morningside United Church; the area is served by a number of bus routes operated by Lothian Buses including the 11, 15, 16, 23, 36 & 45. In 2006 Bruntsfield was brou
