Balgreen
Balgreen is a suburb of Edinburgh, located two miles west of the city centre. It is located to the west of Murrayfield and Saughtonhall, to the east of Corstorphine, to the north of Gorgie, it is bound to the north by Corstorphine Hill, to the west by Carrick Knowe Golf Course, to the east by Water of Leith. The name comes from Balgreen House once situated where Balgreen School now stands and is derived from Scottish Gaelic being Baile na Grèine or Baile Griain from the gravel on the riverbank, or from Baile Grianain, it does not, as some etymologies have suggested, come from "Ball Green". The Gaelic "Bal-" prefix can be found in Balerno and is not unusual in the area; the placename Balgreen is found near Murieston and Ecclesmachanin West Lothian. The Water of Leith flows through here with the Water of Leith Walkway connecting the area to Stockbridge to the north east and Colinton and Balerno to the south west. There is a library, primary school, a large park here, with facilities for football etc. and a children's playpark.
Balgreen tram stop is located off Balgreen Road, adjacently north of the main Glasgow to Edinburgh railway line. 12,26,31 1,2,22,30 38 21 and 22 Balgreen was served by Balgreen Halt railway station, closed in 1968. William Stevenson, Scottish nonconformist preacher and writer, farmed in this area. Bell, Raymond MacKean Literary Corstorphine: A reader's guide to West Edinburgh, Leamington Books, Edinburgh 2017 Cant, Villages of Edinburgh volumes 1 & 2, John Donald Publishers Ltd. Edinburgh, 1986-1987. ISBN 0-85976-131-2 & ISBN 0-85976-186-X Harris, Stuart; the Place Names of Edinburgh. Edinburgh: Gordon Wright Publishing. P. 144. ISBN 0-903065-83-5
Blackford, Edinburgh
Blackford is an area in the south of Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland. It is located near Morningside, The Grange. Blackford Hill dominates the view to the south; the majority of the Blackford is now housing dating from the Victorian or Edwardian eras. The local parish church of the Church of Scotland is the Reid Memorial Church, opened in 1935. Jordan Burn Blackford Hill Blackford Pond Bartholomew's Chronological map of Edinburgh The Royal Observatory, Edinburgh
Firth of Forth
The Firth of Forth is the estuary of several Scottish rivers including the River Forth. It meets the North Sea with Lothian on the south, it was known as Bodotria in Roman times. In the Norse sagas it was known as the Myrkvifiörd. An early Welsh name is Merin Iodeo, or the "Sea of Iudeu". Geologically, the Firth of Forth is a fjord, formed by the Forth Glacier in the last glacial period; the drainage basin for the Firth of Forth covers a wide geographic area including places as far from the shore as Ben Lomond, Harthill and the edges of Gleneagles Golf Course. Many towns line the shores, as well as the petrochemical complexes at Grangemouth, commercial docks at Leith, former oil rig construction yards at Methil, the ship-breaking facility at Inverkeithing and the naval dockyard at Rosyth, along with numerous other industrial areas, including the Forth Bridgehead area, encompassing Rosyth and the southern edge of Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy, Bo'ness and Leven; the firth is bridged in two places. The Kincardine Bridge and the Clackmannanshire Bridge cross it at Kincardine, while the Forth Bridge, the Forth Road Bridge and the Queensferry Crossing cross from North Queensferry to South Queensferry, further east.
The Romans made a bridge of around 900 boats at South Queensferry. From 1964 to 1982, a tunnel existed under the Firth of Forth, dug by coal miners to link the Kinneil colliery on the south side of the Forth with the Valleyfield colliery on the north side; this is shown in the 1968 educational film "Forth - Powerhouse for Industry". The shafts leading into the tunnel were filled and capped with concrete when the tunnel was closed, it is believed to have filled with water or collapsed in places. In July, 2007, a hovercraft passenger service completed a two-week trial between Portobello and Kirkcaldy, Fife; the trial of the service was hailed as a major operational success, with an average passenger load of 85 percent. It was estimated the service would decrease congestion for commuters on the Forth road and rail bridges by carrying about 870,000 passengers each year. Despite the initial success, the project was cancelled in December, 2011; the inner firth, located between the Kincardine and Forth bridges, has lost about half of its former intertidal area as a result of land reclamation for agriculture, but for industry and the large ash lagoons built to deposit spoil from the coal-fired Longannet Power Station near Kincardine.
Historic villages line the Fife shoreline. The firth is a Site of Special Scientific Interest; the Firth of Forth Islands SPA is home to more than 90,000 breeding seabirds every year. There is a bird observatory on the Isle of May; the youngest person to swim across the Firth of Forth was 13-year-old Joseph Feeney, who accomplished the feat in 1933. In 2008, a controversial bid to allow oil transfer between ships in the firth was refused by Forth Ports. SPT Marine Services had asked permission to transfer 7.8 million tonnes of crude oil per year between tankers, but the proposals were met with determined opposition from conservation groups. Bass Rock Craigleith Cramond Eyebroughy Fidra Inchcolm Inchgarvie Inchkeith Inchmickery with Cow and Calf The Lamb Isle of May lowest bridging point: Stirling North shore South shore Isle of May bird observatory Forthfast experimental hovercraft service, 16–28 July 2007 Inchcolm Virtual Tour Take a virtual tour around some of the Inchcolm's military defences
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
Portobello, Edinburgh
Portobello is a coastal suburb of Edinburgh. It lies in eastern central Scotland, three miles to the east of Edinburgh city centre, facing the Firth of Forth, between the suburbs of Joppa and Craigentinny. Although it was a town in its own right, it is a residential suburb of Edinburgh; the promenade fronts onto a wide sandy beach. The area was known as Figgate Muir, an expanse of moorland through which the Figgate Burn flowed as the Braid Burn continuation to the sea, with a broad sandy beach on the Firth of Forth; the name Figgate was thought to come from the Saxon term for "cow's ditch". The land was used as pasture for cattle by the monks of Holyrood Abbey and the name is more to mean "cow road" as in Cowgate in Edinburgh. In 1296, William Wallace mustered forces on the moor in a campaign that led to the Battle of Dunbar, in 1650 it was the supposed scene of a secret meeting between Oliver Cromwell and Scottish leaders. A report from 1661 describes a race in which twelve browster-wives ran from the Burn to the top of Arthur's Seat.
By the 18th century, it had become a haunt of seamen and smugglers. A cottage was built in 1742 on what is now the High Street by a seaman called George Hamilton, who had served under Admiral Edward Vernon during the 1739 capture of Porto Bello, meaning "beautiful port or harbour", who named the cottage Portobello Hut in honour of that victory. By 1753, there were other houses around it; the cottage itself remained intact until 1851, becoming a hostelry for travellers known as the Shepherd's Ha'. In 1763, the lands known as the Figgate Whins were sold by Lord Milton to Baron Mure for about £1,500, afterwards feued out by the latter to William Jameson or Jamieson at the rate of £3 per acre. Jameson discovered a valuable bed of clay near the burn, built a brick and tile works beside the stream, he built an earthenware pottery factory, the local population grew so that Portobello became a thriving village. Land values subsequently rose, by the beginning of the 19th century some parts had been sold at a yearly feu-duty of £40 per annum per acre.
Portobello Sands were used at that time by the Edinburgh Light Horse for drill practice. Walter Scott was their quartermaster, in 1802 while riding in a charge he was kicked by a horse and confined to his lodgings for three days. While recovering, he finished The Lay of the Last Minstrel; the Scots Magazine in 1806 noted that the lands were "a perfect waste covered entirely with whins or furze". Portobello developed into a fashionable bathing resort, in 1807 new salt-water baths at the foot of Bath Street and Regent Street were erected at a cost of £5,000. In 1822, the visit of King George IV to Scotland, organised by Scott, included a review of troops and Highlanders held on the sands, with spectators crowding the sand dunes. During the 19th century, Portobello became an industrial town, manufacturing bricks, lead, pottery and mustard. Joppa to the east was important in the production of salt. In 1833, the town was made a burgh in 1896 it was incorporated into Edinburgh by Act of Parliament. A formidable red-brick power station was built in 1934 at the west end of the beach and operated until 1977.
It was demolished in the following 18 months. Between 1846 and 1964, a railway station provided ready access for visitors to the resort, whose facilities came to include a large open-air heated swimming pool, where the actor Sean Connery once worked as a lifeguard, it made use of the power station's waste heat. The pool was closed in 1979. There was a lido and a permanent funfair which closed in 2007. In 1901, Portobello Baths were opened on The Promenade overlooking the beach; the baths, now known as Portobello Swim Centre, are now home to one of only three remaining operational Turkish baths in Scotland still open to the public. Portobello Pier was a pleasure pier situated near the end of Bath Street, it operated from 23 May 1871 until the start of World War I. The pier had a restaurant and observatory at the end, it cost £7,000 to build and was designed by Sir Thomas Bouch, infamously linked to the Tay Bridge disaster. The iron supports rusted away and the pier was demolished as uneconomic to repair in 1917.
The Edinburgh Marine Gardens were built north of Kings Road in 1908–9. They included an open-air theatre, an industrial hall, a ballroom, a scenic railway, a "rustic mill and water-wheel" and a speedway track, it fell out of use in World War I and never recovered. The speedway/motor cycle track remained in operation until 1939 and the outbreak of World War II; the site was taken over for the Lothian Buses Marine bus depot. Portobello Town Hall fell into redundancy when Portobello was placed under the jurisdiction of Edinburgh and the building was converted into a cinema in 1912 by Robert Lorimer and Robert Matthew. On the demise of cinemas in the 1970s the building returned to council ownership and was renamed as Portobello Town Hall again, it is a venue despite its name has no town -- hall function. The Portobello Lido was built in 1933. Extended police and media attention to the July 1983 abduction of five year-old Caroline Hogg from the Promenade area and her murder by Robert Black had a strong impact on the area.
Portobello's peak as a resort was in the late 19th century, it was in slow decline throughout the 20th century. Whilst visitors were drawn from the inhabitants of Edinburgh, it was once popular with Glaswegians when the Glasgow Fair "trade holiday" signalled the start of
The Canongate
The Canongate is a district of Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland. The name is inherited from the burgh of the Canongate founded by David I of Scotland c.1143. It was bought by the adjacent city of Edinburgh in 1636 but it remained a semi-autonomous burgh under its own administration of bailies chosen by Edinburgh magistrates, until its formal incorporation into the city in 1856; the burgh gained its name from the route that the canons of Holyrood Abbey took to Edinburgh - the canons' way or the canons' gait, from the Scots word gait meaning "way". In more modern times, the eastern end is sometimes referred to as part of the Holyrood area of the city; as well as Queensberry House, now incorporated in the new Scottish Parliament Building complex, the Canongate contains other historic buildings including Huntly House, the Canongate Tolbooth and the Canongate Kirk, opened in 1691 replacing Holyrood Abbey as the parish church of the Canongate. The church is still used for Sunday services as well as weekday concerts.
The Canongate owes its existence to the establishment of Holyrood Abbey in 1128. King David I, who established the Abbey, gave the surrounding area to the Augustinian canons resident at Edinburgh Castle in the form of a regality; the King gave leave to the canons to establish a burgh between the abbey and Edinburgh, as it was the only burgh within the regality it was given the status of burgh of regality of Canongate. The area controlled by the abbey included the lands of Broughton, areas around the Pleasance and North Leith, giving the canons access to a port. Holyrood Palace was developed from the 14th Century onwards as successive monarchs made increasing use of the Abbey for political events such as parliaments and royal councils; the word "Pallais" appears in a reference to the royal lodgings in the reign of James IV, but they were first converted to palace buildings by James V in 1525. The burgh of Canongate had a sometimes turbulent relationship with Edinburgh; the main reason for this was the continual battle over their exact boundaries up until their unification in 1856, an event which proved unpopular with the former's townsfolk.
King James VI of Scotland's accession to the throne of England in 1603 began the long and slow decline of the Canongate. The loss of the royal court from the Holyrood Palace affected the wealth of the surrounding area; this was compounded by the union of the parliaments in 1707, as up until Edinburgh had been the location of the Parliament of Scotland with the Canongate providing a fashionable suburb for the dwellings of the political class. The North Bridge opened in 1772, provided a new and more convenient route to Leith bypassing the Canongate which had until been the main route from Edinburgh to its port of Leith via Easter Road causing more neglect to the residential area, taken over by industrial premises including breweries and a large gasworks; the Canongate was an important district during the Scottish Enlightenment because of the presence of the Canongate Theatre, of which one of the proprietors was Lord Monboddo. The philosopher David Hume performed in a play staged there. Writing in 1824, Robert Chambers said of the Canongate, "As the main avenue from the palace into the city, it has borne upon its pavements the burden of all, beautiful, all, gallant, all that has become interesting in Scotland for the last six or seven hundred years".
Sir Walter Scott writing in 1827 stated. Such is the ancient motto attached to the armorial bearings of the Canongate, and, inscribed, with greater or less propriety, upon all the public buildings, from the church to the pillory, in the ancient quarter of Edinburgh which bears, or rather once bore, the same relation to the Good Town that Westminster does to London"; the area has seen various attempts at improvements and slum clearance, including various schemes by Ebenezer James MacRae in the 1930s and Sir Robert Hurd in the 1950s in traditional style replicating original facades. Another scheme, completed in 1969, by the Basil Spence practice was in modern style but in proportion to surrounding buildings. Due to the redevelopment of the 1950s/60s the once overcrowded and poverty-stricken area suffered from serious depopulation. From the 1960s onwards the Canongate area became notably less industrial, with all of the breweries closing. Residential redevelopment began on former industrial sites in the 1990s and 2000s with flats and other commercial operations being built south of the main road, reversing the decline in population.
Whilst much of this development has a modern appearance, some attempt has been made in terms of layout to retain the "fishbone" pattern characteristic of the Royal Mile. As of 2006, the redevelopment of former industrial land to the north of the Canongate, once occupied by Victorian gasworks and a bus garage, has proved controversial due to the original proposal, now abandoned, to demolish some of the replacement buildings from the 1930s. Above all, the construction of the new Scottish Parliament Building on the site of the old Younger's Abbey Brewery has led to a resurgence of the area's vitality with the Canongate becoming the centre of Scottish political life; the Royal Mile Primary School known as Milton House Public School, is a non-denominational state school that provides primary education for 5- to 11-year-old children. It was designed in 1886 by architect for the Edinburgh Board of Education. Within the school, there is a nursery which caters for 3- to 5-year-old children; as the school is so central to the Canongate community, its pu
Restalrig
Restalrig is a small residential suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland. It is located east of the city centre, west of Craigentinny, to the east of Lochend, both of which it overlaps. Restalrig Road is the main route through the area, running from London Road, at Jock's Lodge, to Leith Links, it is in the ward of Lochend. The place name Restalrig means ridge of the miry land, it is first mentioned as Lestalric in 1165. The church was completed in 1210 by Sir Thomas de Lestalric; the area, over the following centuries, is variously named as Restalric or Rastalrig. The Norman noble family the de Lestalrics were the ancient landowners in the area. Sir John de Lestalric died in 1382, leaving his estate to his daughter Katharine and her husband, Sir Robert Logan, who became the laird; the castle of the Logan family stood on the site of Lochend House. The castle was destroyed by fire in the late 16th century; the present house on the site incorporates fragments of the pre-existing tower house. Visually it is now dominated by an 1820 villa built on the foundations of the older buildings.
It is now owned by the City of Edinburgh Council, is a category B listed building. Lochend Loch below it was for many centuries the main water supply for Leith; the park which occupies the site of the now much reduced loch contains a 16th-century doocot at its northern end, sometimes speculated to have served as a kiln for burning infected clothing and belongings during the plague of 1645. It was used as a boat house, is now category B listed. According to Raphael Holinshed, Richard III of England camped at Restalrig in August 1482 after capturing Berwick upon Tweed. James IV of Scotland was a frequent visitor, giving offerings for masses before the altars of Our Lady and Saint Triduana and for keeping Our Lady's Light in September 1496, while his gunners assembled the royal artillery nearby for his mission to England with the pretender Perkin Warbeck. During the Siege of Leith in Spring 1560, the headquarters of the English army was located at Restalrig Deanery near the kirk. In April 1572 at the height of the Marian civil war, Thomas Randolph and Sir William Drury stayed in the Deanery.
Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange decorated the house with the royal tapestry from Edinburgh Castle. The English ambassadors plotted with Archibald Douglas to kidnap George, Lord Seton from the shore of Leith, but the plan did not take effect. Around 1604, the Logans sold Calton and Restalrig, otherwise known as Wester and Easter Restalrig, to Lord Balmerino and the Craigentinny part of the estate to Edinburgh merchant James Nisbet; the most impressive remaining villa in the area is Marionville House west of the village centre. This has had numerous owners including Robert Dudgeon founder of the Royal Insurance Company, his son Patrick Dudgeon FRSE was raised here. By 1857, Restalrig had become what the ordnance gazetteer of Scotland called "a decayed village"; the area was farmland and dairies. Around 1925, public housing was built to the east. Restalrig House whose entrance was at Restalrig Drive/Restalrig Road South was demolished in 1963. St Margaret's Well stood here until 1859 when it was moved to Holyrood Park by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland to avoid destruction by railway workshop construction.
Piershill Square at the head of Smokey Brae was built by the City Architect, Ebenezer James MacRae in 1937. It replaced Piershill Barracks, the former home of the Royal Scots Greys, the cavalry regiment most famous for their charge at Waterloo, the subject of the well-known, much reproduced, head-on view painted by Elizabeth Thompson, "Scotland Forever!". The parish church at Waterloo contains several monuments to various soldiers "of Restalrig". Within Restalrig are two multi-storey flats, Nisbet Court and Hawkhill Court. Both are owned by City of Edinburgh Council. In 1784, the first British manned hot air balloon landed in Restalrig after taking off from nearby Abbeyhill. There has been a church at Restalrig as far back as 1178 and its parish incorporated South Leith. In 1296, Adam of St. Edmunds, the pastor of'Restalric', swore fealty to English king Edward I, it is not known whether the church was built because of St. Triduana, but the church, a rectangular building, housed her relics, her cult prospered under the patronage of James III of Scotland.
He built a hexagonal chapel royal there, adjacent to the kirk, endowed it a chaplaincy in 1477. It became known as the King's Chapel. Payment for the roof was made in 1486-7. At the same time, he made the kirk a collegiate establishment called the Deanery of Restalrig, initiated a programme of extension. Built on two levels, the surviving lower level of the hexagon was an undercroft for the chapel above. Sometimes referred to as a "well-house", this is a misnomer, the flooding being accidental; the lower aisle was used as a burial chamber for the Logan family. James IV added James V a choir of boys; the kirk was ordered to be removed in December 1560 at the time of the Scottish Reformation. Some parts of choir walls survived, until re-building of the church by William Burn in 1836; the church is a category A listed building. St. Triduana's Aisle is further protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Ss Ninian and Triduana’s Church, Edinburgh is a Roman Catholic church in Restalrig dedicated to St. Triduana.
The church on Marionville Road was designed in 1929 by Giles Gilbert Scott. Robert Hodshon Cay and hi
