#cowgate — Public Fediverse posts

Major road locked down by police amid ongoing incident

Edinburgh police have closed a major street in both directions amid an ongoing incident. A large police presence…
#Edinburgh #UnitedKingdom #UK #GB #Scotland #Headlines #News #Europe #EU #Britain #Cowgate #Emergencyservices #GreatBritain #policepresence
https://www.europesays.com/uk/187287/

Coinyiehouse: the thread about the Royal Mint of Scotland’s long and continuing service to the city’s poor and marginalised

Why buy one, small, cheaply-finished, semi-basement, 1 bed flat for £290k when you can buy 2? Have a look at this not atypical Edinburgh property listing.

But let’s not just be cynical here. It’s an interesting placename is Coinyiehouse (not Coinyie House, or Coinyie-House as given on the street signs, those are modern aberrations); from the Scots coinyie (coinage), from the French cuigne. In even older times it would have been spelled with the letter yogh (ȝ) as cunȝie. Interestingly, in Scots the word not only means coinage, but also the corner of a building – from where we also get the word quoins. These words all come from the same Old French cuigne, which originally meant a wedge or keystone. It was the wedge-shaped die used for striking coins that saw the word come to be applied to monetary tokens.

The placename is both ancient, as this was the site of the Royal Scottish Mint from 1574 to 1707 (in earlier buildings, demolished around 1871) – but is also quite recent – it was only so name Coinyie-House Close as recently as 1981, when the square was redeveloped. For this reason the yogh has been replaced with a “y” rather than the traditional “z”, to avoid mispronouncing it as Coinzie.

Prior to 1574, the Mint had been in Edinburgh Castle, but that was destroyed by the English during the Lang Siege of the Marian civil wars, which was ironic as it had been moved there from outside Holyrood Abbey in 1559 for its own safety! The rebuilt Mint reputedly had extremely thick walls and the reason for the courtyard in the middle was so that it could be lit by windows from within, and not the street, to provide additional security. There is a single photograph of the original building of the “new” Mint, attributed to 1887 but these buildings were demolished 16 years before that date. Above the door is the inscription “Be Mercyfull to Me, O God, 1574“, which places this building as one being the property of George Heriot which was intended by him to form his hospital. On its first floor was the meeting chamber of the Mint, where metals would be assayed, and its upper storeys were residences and chambers for its officials.

The pictures below show coins of the £ Scots currency from the reign of James VI which would have been struck here; any earlier coins struck in Edinburgh pre-date the Mint being in this location. A Merk was 2/3 of a pound. The reason a coin of a value as high as £20 was needed was because the Scots pound was considerably weaker than the English; on the Act of Union in 1707 there were 12 Scottish pennies to the English. It is for this reason that the Gaelic word for penny is Sgillin, which is the same as the Gaelic word for Shilling. When the currencies were re-valued, the old word for a (Scottish) Shilling was applied to the (New, English) Penny, as they had the same value. The word survived decimalisation and is in use to this day.

When James VI moved to England to taken up that Crown as James I, the Scottish Mint continued in operation. Although it would be closed down after the Act of Union, it did continue to operate for a while to assist with the re-coinage scheme of silver (Sterling) coins post-1707. This process was overseen by an exacting man of the name Sir Isaac Newon, Master of the (English) Royal Mint. The new coins used Troy ounces (12 per £) rather than Scots ounces (16 per £). Under the watchful eye of officials from the London, 103,346 Troy pounds in Crowns, half-Crowns, Shillings, and Sixpences were minted in Edinburgh with a value of £320,372 between 1707-1709. These coins struck in Edinburgh can be identified by the small letter E under Queen Anne’s likeness on the head side and were the last coins which were minted in the country.

The modern Coinyie-House Close actually does not lie on the site of the Mint at all, it is slightly to the north. The Victorian school building which later became the Panmure St. Ann’s Centre occupies the southern range; the former school playground, now a car park, occupies the rest of the footprint.

The Ordnance Survey town plan of the 19th century fortunately put the location of the Mint in the correct place, which should have been easy as the buildings were still there! The comparison maps below show in this time the widening of Blackfriar’s Wynd into Blackfriar’s Street in this period, which cause the demolition of the ancient Cardinal Beaton’s House and an entire street of decrepit old tenements. It was this same improvement scheme of 1867 which saw the south range of the block on the Cowgate demolished to widen that street, along with all the buildings on the opposite side of the street too.

Fortunately, before the Mint was demolished a number of artists paid the square a visit to paint and sketch it. The word Mint puts in mind a grand structure but the reality was more plain and surrounded by a ramshackle collection of late medieval and Stuart period buildings and tenements.

A very similar view is shown below in an earlier watercolour by James Skene.

From a Post Office Directory from Skene’s time, we can see that the Mint was home to a whole range of different crafts and trades:

• Peter Begbie, Last Maker
• James Burn, Lacemaker (In Skene’s lower Sketch he has “W. Burn” on the sign above the 1st floor windows)
• John Foster, Chimney-piece Maker (In Skene’s upper sketch he has “J. Forest” above the door)
• John Kettle, Grocer
• James Murray, Wright
• J. Peterkin, Japanner (Japanning is a black lacquering process to protect wood and metal)
• Andrew Wilson, Smith

Skene also gives us an alternative view of the courtyard, looking north in the direction of the High Street.

An 1873 watercolour by John le Conte shows the same view in portrait, we can see the Arms of King Charles II above the distant door in the centre above “God Save Ye King” and a date of 1675, and on the pediment to the right is a further date stone for 1674.

Our modern Coinyie-House Close is not built on the Mint at all, but on the the former United Industrial School for Boys, itself in a 17th century structure. This was inspired by Dr Thomas Guthrie’s “Ragged School” – a mixture of education, feeding and training in basic but practical skills for work – but offering an education that was not strictly Presbyterian in nature. Part of the founding ethos of the school, and the reason it used the word united in its name, was a reflection of its cross-denominational status. It was open to Catholic and Protestant children and its foundation was partly in response to what its founders saw as an imaginary problem of “religious difficulty” which was being used to justify denominational segregation in Scottish education. This marked it out as fairly unique for the time; it pre-dated city’s nominally non-denominational School Board Public Schools.

This non-denominational status only went so far however, the religious education of the school was denominational, being conducted in separate rooms by separate Catholic and Protestant teachers. To satisfy the bodies which provided the School’s funding, the religious teachers were paid out of their own separate funds and not the revenues of the school. The founders had recognised the burgeoning Catholic population of the Cowgate was poorly served by educational institutions and what we might now term social services. This area was Edinburgh’s Little Ireland, where an Irish immigrant community made its home. The Roman Catholic Church of St Patrick was (and is) nearby, just to the east on the other side of South Gray’s Close, housed in an 18th century building that started out life as an (English) Episcopal Chapel before passing to the Relief Church and then the United Presbyterians.

In 1875, the attendance of the United Industrial School was 120 boys and 28 girls. Of its pupils, a majority of boys went on to enter the trades of shoemakers and tailors, and of girls, most when into domestic service. The school attempted to teach its pupils specific trades rather than just monotonous skills such as net making and basket weaving; this was to try and give the children a practical outcome at the end of their education and an incentive to attend. The second-most frequent career path for both boy and girl pupils was emigration, mainly to America.

A typical day in the life of a school child is given below. Note that each denomination is taken separately for prayer, catechism and bible class and on Sunday to their respective church services and Sunday schools:

The school opened in 1848, just a year after Dr. Guthrie’s school and was housed in a building known as the Skinner’s Hall just to the north of the Mint, a 17th century L-plan hall which had been the meeting house of the Incorporated Trade of that name and more recently an Anglican Chapel.

As time progressed, the school roll became increasingly Catholic (a reflection of the demographic changes in the district) and pupils were increasingly placed there “under detention“, i.e. by the courts for reformatory purposes. In the 1860s and 70s the school was improved and new workshops were provided. It came to expand into the wings to its the south and west. To keep the costs down all the joinery work, and much of the other labouring, was carried out by the older boy pupils, superintended by their headmaster.

The school became boys-only due to a declining intake of girls but continued to expand and provide a more wholesome range of activities including swimming and school bands. Despite the best efforts to continue its improvement, the Scotch Education Department (as it was then known) withdrew its funding in 1900 on account of them deeming the environs of the Cowgate an unfit situation into which to send boys under detention. It closed at the end of that term and was sold, the trustees passing the remaining funds to Dr Guthrie’s Original Ragged Industrial School which migrated south out of the city to Gilmerton. The closure caused an capacity crisis in the city for the “ragged” boys, doubly so for the Catholic boys “under detention” as the next nearest industrial school certified to take them was St. Joseph’s, outside Tranent, to where twenty three of them were packed off to be reformed.

The buildings did not go to waste however and were purchased by the Roman Catholic church for incorporation into the neighbouring St. Ann’s R.C. School for Girls. At this time (and until 1918), the Catholic church remained opted-out of the School Board system and maintained responsibility for the education of the young of its denomination. This was on account of a (not misplaced) opinion that the School Boards established by the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 were fundamentally Presbyterian in their religious outlook, despite being Non-Denominational on paper. The Catholic Church also maintained segregation of the sexes in different schools; the School Board did so but only within a common building.

The Roman Catholic Church had arrived in the Cowgate in 1856 when it consecrated the former United Presbyterian church as St. Patrick’s. In the church hall they opened St. Patrick’s School for boys and in an old building on Niddry Street was St. Anne’s School for girls (note at this time, Anne seems to be spelled with an e. After 1872 however the Education Department repeatedly threatened to withdraw its subsidy unless better premises could be found. The boys of St. Patrick’s were eventually moved to St. John’s Hill into a former Industrial school there and a new St. Ann’s would be built on the Cowgate, in the south portion of the old Mint site. This location was perhaps somewhat appropriate given the last coins minted here were in the reign of Queen Anne – even if she was a committed Anglican herself. These schools were only brought fully into the state system by the Education (Scotland) Act 1918, but remained single sex.

The new St. Ann’s was opened in May 1880 to designs by the Edinburgh City Architect, Robert Morham. Its cost of £3,000 was met by the selling of the old buildings, the balance coming from Father Edward. J. Hannan, priest of St Patrick’s. Morham gave the school the in vogue Collegiate Gothic styling, but given he was not the School Board architect, the building is visually distinctive from its city contemporaries. It had a capacity for 300 infants and 300 older girls however in 1884 it is noted it had only 180 infants and 190 senior pupils, under the charge of Sister Evangelist and Sister Mary Gertrude, respectively.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/davids_leicas/36560577360

St. Ann’s was expanded in 1931, a matching west range added to take the façade all the way to Blackfriar’s Street. A plan of 1939 intended that the school would be modernised and expanded to become a single co-educational Catholic primary school for the entire centre of the city. This was part of a rationalisation of R. C. schooling in the Old Town and Southside, both of which had undergone rapid depopulation in the previous two decades due to slum clearances. However the war intervened and this plan was never put into action. The relentless demographic pressure on the school roll meant it was soon surplus to requirements, and it was closed by 1955 and merged into nearby St. Patrick’s, which would close in turn in 1981 for the same reasons.

After closure, St Ann’s lay vacant for almost twenty years until being converted into a community centre in 1975. Three decades later the community centre was closed and the building would be returned to educational use as Panmure St. Ann’s, a small, specialist unit for children “who experience social, emotional and behavioural difficulties“. Panmure comes from Panmure House on Panmure Close, which you may have heard was once the home of one Adam Smith in the 18th Century. Smith lived there from 1778 until his death in 1790. After WW2 the semi-derelict building was bought by the Canadian media magnate and owner of The Scotsman newspaper, Roy Thomson, Lord Thomson of Fleet. He had it refurbished and converted into the Canongate Boys Club, which opened in 1957.

In 1970 Panmure House was listed and had been passed to the “care” of the Corporation of Edinburgh. They merged its community services into that of St. Ann’s on the Cowgate and closed it. Like many old buildings passed into Council stewardship, this would lead to it being left to rot and finding itself on the buildings at risk register! By the early 21st century Panmure house was falling down, but was saved by a restoration for the Edinburgh Business School, a fitting home given the Smith connection.

Panmure St. Ann’s was granted full school status in 2013 but was closed again, for good, in 2017 due to budget cuts and a declining roll. It recently re-opened as a centre for homelessness services, taking it back to its roots as a place for the poorest and marginalised of the city.

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The thread about Asa Wass & Son; the rags-to-riches rag-and-bone men of Victorian Edinburgh

This thread was originally written and published in January 2020.

There was for many years a Steptoe-like institution in Fountainbridge by the name of Asa Wass & Son Ltd. Asa is a biblical Hebrew name and Wass an ancient Anglo-Norman surname, most common in Asa’s time in the Midlands of England. According to my Dad, who grew up in nearby Dalry in the 1950s, the correct local pronunciation is “Azzy Woz“. There is an old Edinburgh tongue-twister which goes;

Izzy Azzy A’ways Iz, or Izzy Azzy Woz?

Asa Wass tongue-twister, source, (Is He as He Always is, or is He As He Was / Asa Wass?)

Asa Wass was born in Morley, Yorkshire in 1833 to Judith and Stephen Wass, a carpenter and moulder. According to the 1851 census, when he was 18, he was trained in his father’s trade. He married Hannah Hirst in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, in 1858 when he was 25 and she 24. They moved to Edinburgh and their first daughter, Elizabeth, was born here in 1859 within the year. More children followed; Judith Ann (Judith was the name of both Asa and Hannah’s mothers) in 1861; Clara in 1866; Thomas Henry in 1868; John Arthur in 1871; Sarah Hannah in 1874.

The “Mapping Jewish life in Edinburgh” publication by the The Research Network in Jewish Studies at Edinburgh University lists the Wasses as Jewish, and indeed Asa and Hannah are names from Hebrew. However, Asa’s mother was baptised into the Wesleyan Methodist Church; he and his siblings were baptised into the Church of England and Asa and Hannah were married in a civil ceremony, so I am not sure on the basis for this assertion. The Wass family are buried under a Celtic cross but I suppose that might just be fashion!

In 1861, the family was resident in the humble surroundings of the Old Town at 235 Cowgate (at the foot of Blair Street), with Asa’s occupation being rag merchant. They are first advertised in Edinburgh in the 1863 Post Office Directory as being at 4 St. Leonard Street, which was the family home, and the shop and yard were now at 260 Cowgate. so we can make an assumption that they are not living and trading in the same place. The entry in the PO Directory is also a symbol of success as it means that they can afford to pay for the listing.

In 1871 the Wass family residence and the business itself are moved to 63 Fountainbridge, where they are listing themselves as “woollen rag merchants“. This was on the corner of Lothian Road and Early Grey Street, so a prime position to trade from. In 1878, Asa Wass (“Broker, Fountainbridge“) his wife and his manager James Erskine were found guilty at the Burgh Court of contravening the Brokers Act for purchasing “three small quantities of old hair without being in possession of the necessary licence“. Each was fined £1 with the option of 3 days imprisonment instead. Despite this curious brush with the law they obviously prosper, as within ten years the business has moved to a much larger premises in a yard at 161 Fountainbridge and the family are at Spyfield Cottage in Colinton. They have a shop unit that occupies 153-159 and 163 Fountainbridge and at number 161 is the pend given access to their yard.

The same census that places them here also records only 12 Wasses in Scotland, all in Midlothian and 9 of them being Asa, his wife and his children. They are still living in Colinton in the 1891 in the census, by which time there are an entire 16 Wasses in Scotland. Asa’s occupation is still recorded as being the humble-sounding “Rag, Rope, Paper and Metal Merchant“. However we begin to get a real sense of his success in business; the family had a live-in servant, Margaret Catcher, with them in Colinton and the PO Directory lists a house in town at 17 Leamington Terrace, as good a neighbourhood then as it is now. In 1893, Asa Wass was given permission by the Dean of Guild Court to erect stores at his yard at 161 Fountainbridge.

The photograph that I have found of Asa Wass shows a dignified, respectable-looking Victorian gentleman, clearly somebody who was doing well in life. Edinburgh had a big glue & gelatine manufactory near Fountainbride at Cox’s in Gorgie which demanded bones and skins and both the rivers of the Esk and Water of Leith supported a paper industry who made use of copious quantities of linen rags in their process. A central clearing house, the General Rag Warehouse, had been established in the city as early as 1793 to act as a middle-man between the paper makers and the individual collectors of rags. Rags would be sorted into one of five different categories; Superfine, Fine, Blue, Second and Grey, before being sold, and there was a big premium for the better quality. There was a ready demand in the city for Asa’s skins, bones and rags and he obviously made a lot out of these.

He passed away aged 66 in on November 10th 1898 at the family home at 11 Morningside Park, a very respectable address. His funeral was held on Monday 14th at 3PM at the Dean Cemetery – not where you neccesarily expect to find a rag-and-bone man buried. Asa left an estate worth about £160,000 in today’s money. All the evidence points to him having done very well out of his trade. Hannah Wass continued to live at Morningside Park and died there in 1911.

On the death of Asa, his eldest son Thomas Henry takes over the running of the business, although the properties are is in his mother’s name and it remains known as Asa Wass & Son. However the following year the entire business is listed for sale, and the year after a shop that they used in Rose Street is also sold. By the 1915 valuation rolls the business and proprietor of 161 Fountainbridge are Asa Wass & Son Ltd, but with Thomas Henry in charge. He lived in a pleasant house at 6 Merchiston Grove and died in 1922 at an even larger and more pleasant one at 3 Midmar Avenue, leaving an estate worth at least £400k in today’s money. His son was also Thomas Henry, known as Harry, but I am not clear if he took over from his father. There is a photo of the Wass nag and cart in 1925, by which point Asa has not been around for nearly a quarter of a century, his son too has died, but it still trades under their name and reputation.

In 1941, Asa Wass & Son Ltd. occupies 161, 169 and 177 Fountainbridge, telephone number 21544. By this time, they are the only bone merchants listed “in the book” in Edinburgh. The are also listed under rag merchants and metal merchants and have taken out a not insubstantial advert. Business is clearly still prosperous and the local paper and glue industries still have a use for the wares of Asa Wass & Son Ltd. and of course wartime Britain could not get enough scrap metal.

The business ceased trading and was abandoned in the early 1960s, by this time it had traded for longer under the Asa Wass & Son name for longer than either Asa himself was involved. The yard became a haunt for local children to play in and there are some photos from this period here; http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/0_B/0_buildings_-_asa_wass_yard.htm. The whole area was very run down and was swept away in the early 1970s when Scottish & Newcastle relocated the Fountain Brewery there (from over the road) .

Asa and Hannah’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, moved to Devonshire on her marriage and when she died in 1934 was recorded as living at a house called Dunedin Crediton, one wonders if this was some sort of family joke about the source of the family’s wealth. Her younger brother, John Arthur Wass, was confined to the Crichton Institution for Lunatics in Dumfries in June 1890 around the age of 19, far from home. This is another indication of the family’s wealth; this was the best sort of place money could afford to send somebody with a mental health condition at this time. He was discharged around a year later, but is admitted to the Aberdeen Royal Asylum in 1895. In 1899 he is transferred to the Dundee Asylum, from where he escapes in November of that year.

John Arthur was a private patient (i.e. he or his family were wealthy enough to pay), and was suffering from moral insanity (“madness consisting in a morbid perversion of the natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits, moral dispositions, and natural impulses, without any remarkable disorder or defect of the interest or knowing and reasoning faculties, and particularly without any insane illusion or hallucinations“) according to his Notice of Admission to Dundee in 1899. After his escape he emigrates to the US in 1901 (I am not clear if he was ever “recaptured”) and here he settles down, marries and becomes a poultryman, in Monmouth, New Jersey. By 1915 he was living in New York as a landscape gardener and by 1920 was a sculptor. I sincerely hope he found peace here after the torment of his years in Victorian asylums.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.