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Educating Children, Bakers and Tourists: the thread about Castlehill Public School

Preamble. The schools of the “School Board” era of public education (1872-1918) have for some reason a particular fascination for me, one which is more profound where they are either no longer in use as schools or have disappeared entirely. This thread began as a couple of lines for my own notes about each of the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” but rapidly snowballed into an intention to cover each, in alphabetical order, on its own and in rather more detail, but not so much that they can’t be posted quite frequently.

The third chapter of our series looking at the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” investigates the life and times of Castlehill School. This occupied the site of the Gordon House, the 17th century residence of George Gordon, 1st Duke of Gordon who was Captain and Constable of Edinburgh Castle and is remembered for surrendering that fortification all too readily to the Protestant Lords during the Glorious Revolution of 1689. His property came later into the possession of the Bairds of Saughtonhall who gave their name to Blair’s Close that forms the western boundary of the school plot.

Gordon House in 1887, immediately before demolition to make way for Castlehill School. Photo by Alexander Adam Inglis, Edinburgh & Scottish Collection of Edinburgh City Libraries

The school was designed by Robert Wilson, architect to the Edinburgh School Board, and was a radical departure in style from its rather austere Collegiate Gothic contemporaries by the adoption of Scots Baronial Revival; complete with turrets, crowstepped gables and mock battlements. This was seen as more befitting of its prominent location at the head of the Old Town. Another change was the use of red Cornockle sandstone from Lochmaben in Dumfriesshire to add a visual contrast with the more usual yellowy-grey from the local Hailes Quarry.

Castlehill School, north elevation on the Castlehill itself. CC-by-SA 2.0 Neil T, via Flickr

A third change from its predecessors was the extension from two to three storeys; an attic level, lit by rooflights, providing rooms for teaching specialist subjects such as needlework and drawing. This was done to make the best use of a cramped site which amounted to just quarter of an acre; half that of the contemporary Milton House School in the Canongate and even less than the notoriously cramped Bristo Public School. (The only other three storey board school before this was West Fountainbridge, which had a similarly small plot)

Ordnance Survey Town Plans of Edinburgh, 1876 (right) and 1893 (left), before and after Castlehill School opened. Move the slider to compare. Note in the 1876 map that the Church of Scotland and Free Church both have schools in the district; St. Columba’s and St. John’s respectively. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Internally, three original mantlepieces from the Gordon mansion were incorporated into staff rooms as was an old entrance door. To the rear (south), the site dropped steeply away down the slope of the Old Town’s Crag and Tail topography. An additional level was therefore required, originally this was an open colonnade, providing a covered extension to the playgrounds, but later it was enclosed to provide additional teaching areas. A tall retaining wall faced onto Johnston Terrace at the rear, with entrance staircases (separate for boys and girls) up to the playgrounds and a three storey Janitor’s house bridged the two levels.

South (rear) elevation of Castlehill School, showing the plot sloped steeply in two directions; down from the Castlehill and down Johnston Terrace. The additional lower storey to the rear with the arched windows, the retaining wall with entrance stairways and the three-level janitor’s house can be seen. The spire of the Highland Tolbooth St John’s church towers over an already tall school. CC-by-SA 4.0 Stephencdickson via Flickr

The school opened on Monday December 3rd 1888. Although there was no formal ceremony to mark the occasion, over 800 pupils were marched out of their old schools (those inherited by the School Board at Brown Square, Borthwick and Old Assembly Close and Victoria Terrace) up the hill to their new home. A formal opening would take place exactly 5 months later on May 3rd 1889.

Former Brown Square school in 1913. This was one of the Heriot Trust day schools that were merged into the School Board after 1872, immediately identifiable by all the Jacobean decorations modelled off of Heriot’s Hospital itself. Edinburgh Photographic Society collection, via National Galleries Scotland.

Interestingly, the legend carved prominently into both the front and read façades reads “CASTLE HILL SCHOOL”, even though it was nearly always officially referred to as one word, just Castlehill, a change that was also reflected in the Ordnance Survey maps around the time.

“CASTLE HILL SCHOOL” on the north façade from the Flickr of Bob White, CC-by-NC-ND 2.0

From the beginning the school was also used for evening education. But – maintaining the theme of being different – at Castlehill this was not for adults. Instead it catered only for children under 14, pupils given special dispensation by the School Board to attend evening school on account of them needing to work during the school day to help support their families. In 1898 there were 212 boys and girls so registered. In 1890, the school’s first headmaster, John Davidson, resigned on account of poor health. In May 1898 headmaster William C. S. Hunter died and was replaced by James C. Anderson of Leith Walk School. His salary of £340 being equivalent to around £38,400 in 2025 and his “reign” was formally inaugurated with a presentation by Colin G. Macrae, chairman of the School Board, and concert at the school on Wednesday 1st June that year.

The school and its pupils suffered as a result of the harsh social conditions in Edinburgh’s Old Town in the late 19th and early 20th century. Headmaster Anderson was one of a number of his peers in the district who in spoke publicly in 1904 on “how drunkenness [of parents] affects the children“. 150 of his pupils were on the “food roll” due to the inability of their parents to feed then, with a further 30 receiving relief from the district fund. This was almost a quarter of the school and other children of leaving age (14) were being taught with 7 year-olds on account of how much schooling they had missed. Anderson put this down to drunkenness which he said was getting worse, as was thriftlessness. In 1908, under the terms of the Education (Scotland) Act of that year, the School Board instituted a meal scheme for necessitous children, each receiving a bowl of soup and bread during their school day. This was a great success and was expanded in 1911 by converting West Fountainbridge School into a dedicated central cooking centre. One hundred children from Castlehill were among the first recipients to benefit, but as their school lacked a dining hall they went to the Independent Labour Party Hall on Melbourne Place to eat. The tickets for these dinners issued daily at school to encourage children deserving of the meals to actually attend their lessons. They could also be purchased for 6d a week; with a little bit of liberal rounding they became known as “penny dinners“.

Soup and bread is served for lunch at North Canongate School, c. 1914. The man with the moustache and white apron is the headmaster. Note the lack of shoes on a number of the boys’ feet.

Feeding was not the only effort made to improve the lot of the children of Castlehill. In 1908 permission was gained by the School Board to adopt a piece of ground on Johnston Terrace next to the Church of Scotland Normal School (a teacher training college) for use as a playground, that at the school being completely insufficient in size and aspect. In 1909, under the auspices of Patrick Geddes’ Edinburgh Social Union, a patch of wasteland on Johnston Terrace was converted by pupils at the school into a model demonstration garden of their very own. Geddes established numerous such gardens, believing them as living classrooms for teaching both biology and self-improvement. Vegetable plots 150 feet long and 7 feet wide grew potatoes, peas, beans, cauliflowers, cabbages, turnips, leeks, onions, carrots, lettuces and other salad vegetables which were used in cookery classes in the school. This space was used for teaching natural history lessons and the principles of crop rotation. It also allowed the school to apply for a valuable additional grant for teaching gardening from the Education Department.

The Castlehill School garden off Johnston Terrace, c. 1914

The next year, 1910, headmaster H. F. Sim brought the first case of its kind in Edinburgh to the City Police Court under the Children Act 1908, when two shopkeepers were charged with and pleaded guilty to selling “smoking mixture” to to children under the age of 16. Sim had caught boys in the school trying to smoke a pipe filled with the ersatz tobacco and confiscated from them their paper bag marked “The Boys’ Smoking Mixture and Pipe: price One Halfpenny“. On questioning, he had found from them where they had acquired it and reported the matter to the city’s Medical Officer of Health. The magistrate admonished the defendants and said “a warning should be given to tobacconists that the sale of such a mixture was an illegal practice, and that in other cases of the kind the offenders would certainly be punished.“

A production of scenes from Julius Caesar for the benefit of the School Board by the boys of Castlehill School, March 1912. The Evening News recorded that Mark Anthony was played by William Caldwell and that he “made a very excellent attempt at the speech at Caesar’s funeral”.

In October 1912, to remedy a lack of accommodation in the school, the adjacent ancient tenement known as Cannonball House – the last block of old Castlehill – being acquired by the Board for £1,925. It had recently been bought by the Cockburn Association with a view to preservation and the Board spent £3,500 thoroughly renovating and converting into additional teaching spaces. Its four principal classrooms could accommodate 180 children and there were special rooms for practical subjects such as cookery. In the basement were “spray baths“; showers for the children, most of whom lacked even basic domestic sanitation in their homes. The building was substantially altered, with one wing and the old Blair’s Close removed to improve ventilation and daylight. A number of original 17th century features were uncovered during restoration and were retained and installed in the fabric in new locations, making the end result something of a chimaera. The east gable is the biggest give-away way that not all is what it seems with this apparently old tenement; look for the tall classroom windows and the Edinburgh School Board emblem high up on the pediment.

Cannonball House, before and after. In 1900, an image by James C. H. Balmain (left) and in 1957 by H. D. Wyllie. Photos in the Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries. Move the slider to compare.

In WW1 the school was requisitioned by to act as a depot and billeting for soldiers of the 5th Royal Scots based out of Edinburgh Castle. The Church of Scotland Young Men’s Guild was given the use of a room the following year to run a canteen and recreation room for them, with a gramophone, games, books, newspapers and writing materials. A teacher at the school, James Bathgate, was injured on war service in July 1915 when serving as a private with the College Company, 4th Royal Scots, in France. In April 1917, Headmaster Sim lost his son, Charles Henry Stuart, who died in hospital having been fatally injured serving with the Royal Field Artillery.

After the war, in April 1922, Headmistress Miss C. E. Anderson retired and was presented with a gold wristlet watch from the parents and her colleagues and a diamond brooch from the pupils. She had been teaching the children of the area since the school opened – a record period of 41 years!

In 1936 a new technological front in teaching was opened up at Castlehill when a room was specifically converted for the use of the Edinburgh branch of the newly instituted Scottish Educational Film Association for the production of educational films. It had been recognised that technology had a part to play in education – in 1931 a group from Canonmills School had been given a trial lesson on the theme of sound recording and reproduction at their local cinema – but further progress was wanting on account of a lack of suitable films for the classroom. The Education Committee thus resolved to make them for themselves: as well as providing the studio for the Association, they also covered the (then) substantial overhead of film costs and in return had a controlling say in the content of films. The first production was a four-part geography film entitled “The Port of London“. The Association would remain at Castlehill until 1957, when they moved to Boswell’s Court.

Members of the Scottish Educational Film Association and school teachers working on a production in the new studio at Castlehill. Edinburgh Evening News, December 19th 1936

On the morning of September 1st 1939, children showed to schools all over the city with their coat, a bag or case and a cardboard label – they were being evacuated. Some 200 gathered at Castlehill before heading to Waverley station and destinations unknown. The school remained open for those children that stayed behind and there were still 273 on the roll in September 1940. The logbook records the peculiarities of an education during wartime; there were separate air raid shelters for infants, girls and boys; all children had to carry their gas masks with them; there were weekly gas mask drills and weekly marching drills to and from the shelters.

Excerpt from the logbook at Castlehill School for February 1940 with notes on the gas mask and air raid shelter drills.

Additional wartime uses were found for the partially vacant school. A central depot for clothing for evacuees was established in October 1939; donations were received and sorted before being distributed to those in need who had been evacuated and found themselves wanting during their “enforced holiday to the country“. This was organised by Miss Cairns, Superintendent of Domestic Subjects for the Corporation, and she had 50 sewing mistresses from across the city under her direction. The supply of children’s coats proved insufficient and so these “clever-fingered” women picked apart the excess of larger items, cut them down to the required sizes and put them back together again. They were joined by women of the Edinburgh Personal Service League who performed a similar operation for men’s clothing, to be sent via the Red Cross to injured servicemen and prisoners of war. Wartime cookery classes were run in the school by the Corporation’s night school teachers. These were aimed at women to try and instruct them in how to eke out their rations, substitute various items that were off ration to recreate old favourites and how to do so more healthily and with less waste of fuel. Mrs Gray of the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) established a group of like-minded women to make soft toys and dolls and clothing for babies and toddlers who were being cared for in public nurseries, their mothers being on war work. Most of these things were no longer being manufactured during wartime. Such was the success of this endeavour that it later relocated to a dedicated workshop at Bristo School as the Nursery Equipment Centre.

A wartime cookery lesson at Castlehill. Edinburgh Evening News, May 14th 1940

Postwar, a shock announcement in May 1951 broke news that the school was to be closed at the end of that term. It had been built for 800 but as a result of the long term urban depopulation of the city it was down to 293 by this point; there was plenty excess capacity to rehouse them at Milton House, Tollcross and South Bridge schools for the same reason.

A Castlehill class, 1947

A secondary reason behind the closure was that the authorities wanted to establish a Central School Of Bakery and Catering where apprentice workers from the city’s important baking industry (as well as more general cookery and catering) could undertake industry-specific further education. Parents protested the decision but the Corporation was unmoved and voted by 14 to 5 for closure. Its only concession was to promise crossing guards to help children navigate the busy roads that they now needed to transit on their way to their new schools.

One mother vents her frustration towards Councillors Thomson and Hedderwick of the Education Committee at a meeting to oppose the closure of Castlehill School, May 25th 1951.

The bakery school opened on Monday 19th January 1954, Councillor H. A. Brechin performed the honours and stated “these new premises, together with the modern equipment, give Edinburgh one of the most up-to-date baking and catering schools in the United Kingdom“.

Mr John Russell shows apprentices a loaf fresh from the oven (left) and John Notman (right) is supervised in the correct way to serve diners at Castlehill School in these photos from the Evening News, October 2rd 1957

It did not last long however and as a result of changes to further education and the city’s industries, it was closed by 1970. While it once again sought a purpose, during the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh that year it served as a temporary museum of regimental history at Edinburgh Castle. In 1971 the main building was converted to offices for the City Engineer’s department and would later be occupied by the Drainage Department of Lothian Regional Council. Between 1972 and 1974 it was also the home for the Theatre Workshop, an arts and drama centre for children, while it was found permanent premises.

1965, the sad sight of the abandoned School Garden. Photo by Ronald Alexander © Edinburgh City Libraries

In August 1986, Lothian Region accepted an offer for £250,000 from William Muir distillers who proposed to convert the former school it into a whisky museum and heritage centre. £2 million was spent on this project which opened its doors on 3rd May 1988, the building’s centennial year. It was an instant success and is now into its 5th decade of offering a very different sort of education than that the building’s planners had in mind.

Cannonball House was retained by the Education Department when the main building became the bakery school and was used for community education, passing to Lothian Regional Council on the formation of that organisation. In 1984 a Children’s History Centre was opened and the building was later properly converted by the Region for £200,000 for use as a schools education centre modelled on Patrick Grddes’ ideas; the Castehill Urban Studies Centre. It was the first such centre in Britain and I recall school trips there in the early 1990s, the name of the guide was Mrs Quick – I’m not sure why that name stuck with me, but it did!. Between 1999 until the opening of the new Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in 2004, Cannonball House was used as a schools education centre for the temporary parliament housed in the General Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland on the Lawnmarket. In 2013, 100 years after it opened as part of the school, it found a new life as a high-end restaurant by the Scottish-Italian Contini family, who themselves had started out in Scotland a century before.

Contini Cannonball Restaurant and Bar, via Contini.com

Want to read more about Edinburgh’s Lost Board Schools? The previous chapter was about Canonmills School.

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The thread about the Guse Pye; house of a poet and a painter that’s still there if you know where to look

There is a stunning watercolour landscape painting of Edinburgh in the mid-18th century, observed from the point of view of the Castle looking north to Leith by Paul Sandby (there’s a whole thread on that if you click the link). In the mid-ground of that picture is a prominent and intriguing building: a tall octagonal structure with a wing and portico to its front. This building was Ramsay Lodge or Ramsay Hut, the home of the romantic poet and stalwart figure of the Edinburgh enlightenment, Allan Ramsay.

“Edinburgh & the North Lock with the Bank on Which the New Town is Built” By Paul Sandby, c. 1750. Showing inset an enlargement of the prominent house in the mid-ground. Maps K.Top.50.96.b, British Library, PD.

During his 4 years in Edinburgh, the young Paul Sandby – a military draughtsman engaged in assisting William Roy with his “Great Map” of North Britain – had become well acquainted with Allan Ramsay and a welcome addition to the social circle that redeveloped around him. It is therefore not surprising that his house features so prominently in this and another landscape painting by Sandby.

Ramsay was born in Leadhills, Lanarkshire, the son of the superintendent of the lead mines that gave the settlement its name. As a boy, he was apprenticed to a wigmaker in Edinburgh and it was in this trade that he would first find success, both financial and professional. A man of broad interests and intelligence, in 1720 he entered the book selling trade from his shop on Niddrie’s Wynd and in 1722 he relocated himself and the business to the Luckenbooths – 18th century Edinburgh’s premier retail space. It was from the first floor here,in 1725, that he opened Scotland’s first circulating library. This establishment had over 30,000 titles available to borrow and it became the hangout for city’s literati.

Allan Ramsay the Poet (1684 – 1758), by William Aikman. This painting belonged to Ramsay’s correspondent and patron, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik. Aikman was a friend of both men. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

As well as a businessman, Ramsay was something of a wit and a writer, and published his own work. His romantic poetry, exemplified by The Gentle Shepherd brought him critical acclaim and he found himself desiring a “poet’s nest” as befitting a bard of his standing. What he needed was a suburban retreat, at once in the heart of the city’s bustling Old Town but at the same time outwith its confines. He found this such a spot on the northern slopes of the Castle Hill, commanding views over the fields: past the smoky smudge on the shoreline of Leith and across the Forth and Fife beyond to the Highland mountains in the distance.

“Edinburgh Castle” by Paul Sandby, with the Guse Pye house bright and prominent on the Castle Hill. The West Kirk (St. Cuthbert’s) is the church at the head of the Nor Loch on the right. CC-by-NC-ND 3.0 Tate Gallery

In September 1733, Ramsay acquired a portion of garden land at this location from Robert Hope, a surgeon. In Memorials of Edinburgh, a story is related that he desired “as much land as he could get” to build a “cage for his burd” (i.e. his wife, of whom he was fond) and that this was the reason for its unusual, tall, octagonal structure. From an architectural point of view, it is thought the house may be inspired either by the Tower of the Winds in Athens or the 1720 Octagon Room of Orleans House in Twickenham by Scottish architect James Gibb for James Johnston, a former Secretary of State for Scotland.

View of the Tower of the Winds, Athens, Rey Etienne, 1867 (PD)The Octagon Room, Orleans House. CC-by 2.0 Matt Brown

Ramsay wanted the whole town to admire his mansion but the wags of the city derided his hubris and called his octagonal house the Guse Pye, after the shape of the traditional Scottish Christmas dish. Ramsay’s pride was hurt and he complained to Patrick Murray, 5th Lord Elibank, who retorted “Indeed, Allan, when I see you in it, I think the wags are not far wrong“. The ownership of the house was transferred to his son, also Allan Ramsay, in 1741. This Allan Ramsay is as famous as his father, but as a portrait painter, and he had designs on using the building as his studio (although he would spend most of his time away from his native City).

Allan Ramsay the Painter (1713 – 1784), copy of a self-portrait by Alexander Nasmyth. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

In 1742, Ramsay the Poet retired to his Guse Pye, shutting up his house and bookshop in the Luckenbooths. He intended to spend what would be the final 12 years of his life in “ease and tranquil enjoyment” however his burd, Christian Ross, died the following year. He was not alone in life however, as his company was courted by all ranks of Edinburgh, who sought him out at the Guse Pye. It is said that he preferred instead to be surrounded by his family and their young friends, joining in their fun and games with “hearty life and good humour“. These young friends included the Paul Sandby also painted a very intimate sketch of Ramsay smoking an enormous “Churchwarden’s Pipe” in the house. Surrounded by two young women; with a book on his table; a cup by his side to drink from and a candle burning on the wall, it is a very homely scene. Ramsay was a bit of a closet Anglophile at heart, desiring to be an equal with the London literary wits, and this talented young Englishman would have been a fine addition to his circle.

Alan Ramsay the Poet, in later life by Paul Sandby, c. 1750 RCIN 914403 © Royal Collection Trust

When the Jacobites routed the Hanoverian Army under Sir John Cope at Prestonpans in September 1745, Ramsay the Poet – despite his known Jacobite sympathies (or perhaps because of them) – retired a safe distance to Mavisbank in Midlothian, the home of his correspondent and friend Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, 2nd Baronet. The Highland army of Charles Edward Stuart soon occupied the city, without resistance, where Ramsay the Painter, happened to be present on one of his infrequent sojourns north. Word was soon sent to him from the Palace of Holyroodhouse, desiring him to come at once and paint a picture of the Prince who hoped to be his King: which he did.

Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Allan Ramsay, 1745

During this period, the Guse Pye found itself damaged by the cannons of Edinburgh Castle and then ransacked by the garrison, who damaged many of the buildings on the Castle Hill to try and stop them being occupied by the Jacobite pickets. The latter were under direct orders from the Young Pretender to prevent – on pain of death – supplies and communications from reaching the Castle. As the last building between the city and the Castle, Ramsay’s house was directly in the firing line. By November however the Prince and his army were gone south – as had Ramsay the Painter too – but unlike the Former, the latter would make it to London.

Allan Ramsay’s House and Garden, 1871. © City of Edinburgh Council

The Ramsays continued to extend their landholding on the Castle Hill; acquiring the portion further down the slope from the house in 1748 from the Hopes and adding a new frontage, new wing and a proper entryway as befitting a house of its status. In 1754, workmen improving the garden accidentally broke through into a subterranean chamber some 14 feet square. In amongst the rubble and detritus they found a statue of white stone with a crown upon its head – supposed to be a Virgin Mary – two brass candlesticks, a dozen old Scottish and French coins and two cannon balls. It was supposed that this space dated to the middle of the 16th century when a large fortification, known as the Spur, was built out of the castle by its French garrison under the Regent Mary of Guise. Another theory was it was the remains of a supposed medieval chapel to St. Andrew which had once stood on the castle hill.

When Ramsay the Poet died in 1757, his son the Painter succeeded to it and let it out. By 1759 it was occupied by William Johnston, an advocate and a member of Ramsay’s Select Society.

The Guse Pye, by George Manson (1850-1876). CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

In 1765, Ramsay junior was granted permission to build two town houses – known as Ramsay Street – to the east of the Guse Pye, on the site of the town’s old Bell Foundry which he had acquired from the City. It was his intention that these houses, to designs by the family friend Robert Adam, should be “in the English fashion, fit to accommodate two small families of distinction“. These houses were never built and instead in 1768 he erected a terrace of three, four-storey houses, known as Ramsay Garden. One of these houses was occupied by Ramsay’s widowed mother-in-law and his sister in law.

The Ramsay Garden townhouses, with Patrick Geddes’ additions to the left. © Edinburgh City Libraries

Ramsay the Painter spent little time in Scotland in the later years of his life and was appointed Principal Painter to His Majesty in London in 1767. But he continued to consolidate his land on the north slopes of the Castle Hill, acquiring the last portion of the Hope’s holding in 1773. He died in 1784, the lands and houses of Ramsay Garden now passing to his only surviving son, Captain (later General) John Ramsay.

General John Ramsay (1768-1845), by François Ferrière. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

John had accompanied his late father on a “Grand Tour” of Italy in 1782, and despite a career as a soldier, he found time to take up painting himself. He died without issue and as a result the house and his fortune passed to a distant relative: Lord Murray of Henderland (for whom the district of Murrayfield is named). An 1850s plan to build a large terrace infront of the Guse Pye for the statue of Allan Ramsay senior, which now resides in West Princes Street Gardens, came to nothing.

Ramsay Garden and proposed terrace for a monument, engraging, 1853. © Edinburgh City Libraries

The houses of Ramsay Lodge and Ramsay Garden were let out, until the former was purchased in 1890 by the sociologist, philanthropist and pioneering town planner Patrick Geddes.

1878 Engraving of Poet’s Guse Pye House, with Ramsay Garden built by his son the painter on its left.

Geddes engaged the architect Stewart Henbest Capper to design a 5-storey, arts and crafts fantasia around the Guse Pye. His intention was to establish a mixed community, composed of artisans and students alongside private dwellings, to promote regeneration in the decrepit Old Town of the City. Capper’s 1892 development was extended two years later by Sydney Mitchell, who incorporated, extended and redeveloped the Guse Pye and the original Ramsay Garden into the structure as a hall for residence for students, the first of its kind in Edinburgh.

The second phase of Geddes’ Ramsay Gardens under construction, by as unknown photographer, probably in 1895. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

The end result – which we’ll pluralise as Ramsay Gardens – was a striking complex, high up on the Castle Hill, a curious mix of late medieval and early modern Scottish architectural style and (then) modern ideas about construction and planning and one which rendered the original house almost unrecognisable. This rambling, highly ornamented and colourful building was in radical contrast to the prevailing, conservative architecture of Edinburgh at the time:

The grey old metropolis of the North had been getting greyer year by year with freestone and slate, when suddenly on the east slope of the Castle Hill, a bright-hued pile arose, shocking the devotees of drab.

Margaret Armour, writing in “The Studio”, 1897

Ramsay Gardens, by H. D. Wyllie 1945. © Edinburgh City Libraries

Geddes part-financed the project himself and when it was complete took up residence in one of its main apartments and established a co-operative publishing company from there. He also incorporated into it an art school, the Old Edinburgh School of Art, where the Celtic revival painter John Duncan led classes in design, metalwork, leatherwork, woodwork etc. in the spirit of the arts and crafts movement. It was Geddes who commissioned Duncan to design the Witches’ Well, which is installed nearby on the Castle Hill as a monument to those executed near that spot for witchcraft.

Geddes had further plans for the redevelopment, including arts studios and a sculpture gallery built into the slopes below, a gatehouse – crowned with a full-scale replica of the city’s old Netherbow Port – spanning Ramsay lane to link it into the quadrangle of the New College buildings and a new public hall next door atop the Castle Hill Reservoir. His various schemes financially overstretched him however and he was declared bankrupt, owing £60,000, in 1896, putting an end his ambitions. His friends and supporters set up a philanthropic company, the Town and Gown Association, to take over Ramsay Gardens and run it in the spirit with which he had intended it.

George Shaw Aitken’s unrealised final designs for Ramsay Gardens, including the studios and gallery to the front and the replica of the Netherbow Port tower to the left (the taller tower behind is the steeple of the Victoria Hall – the General Assembly building of the Church of Scotland – later the Highland Tolbooth St. John’s church.

Ramsay Gardens was sold by the Town and Gown Association in 1945 to the Commercial Bank of Scotland, who used it as a residential building for staff and a training centre. It has subsequently passed into private hands and is a mix of exlusive residential homes, pieds-à–terre and holiday lets. The original houses of the two Allan Ramsays are still there in plain site, within this most famous of skylines, even if you’d hardly know it to look at them.

Ramsay Gardens, highlighting the core of the original Guse Pye house in orange, and Allan Ramsay junior’s Georgian terrace of Ramsay Garden in magenta. After CC-by-SA 3.0 David Monniaux

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.

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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret