#regentroad — Public Fediverse posts

An unlikely home for a King of France: the thread about the Palace of Holyroodhouse

This thread was originally written and published in September 2022.

Given that the Palace of Holyroodhouse was getting more attention than it is used to in the week that this thread was first written, it seemed like a good idea to take a brief delve into its history of royal residents and one who is highly remarkable but far less well remembered than others.

The Palace of Holyroodhouse, lithograph after J. D. Harding, c. 1850. CC-by-3.0 University of Edinburgh Walter Scott Image Collection

The palace is well known to be the official residence of the British Monarch in Scotland, but that’s a role that it has only held for just over 100 years, with King George V conferring the status upon it in 1922. It’s also well known that it long served as a royal residence for the Scottish monarchy going back to medieval times, with this situation ending in 1603 when King James VI left it, Edinburgh and Scotland for London and the English throne. James was the palace’s longest term royal resident, being principally based there from his coming of age in 1579 until he left 24 years later. He had promised to return to Edinburgh every 3 years, but did not keep his word and would not return until 1617 (and then after that, never again). There is therefore a period of four centuries to be accounted for between James’ departure and George’s designation.

The young King James VI, painting by Adrian van Son from the collection in Pittencrieff House in Fife

After James, Royal visits were infrequent. Charles I stayed here when he came to Edinburgh in 1633 for his showpiece Scottish coronation, the façade being remodelled in his honour. He returned to the palace in the turbulent year of 1641, and in 1646, conferred it to one of his principal Scottish supporters; James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton. The hereditary role of Keeper of the palace is one that the Dukes of Hamilton hold hold to this day. It was badly damaged in 1650 by the occupying troops of Oliver Cromwell after their defeat of the Scottish Army at Dunbar. The picture below shows the palace at it was in 1649 following the remodelling for Charles.

The west range of the palace drawn around 1649 by James Gordon of Rothiemay, prior to reconstruction in the 1670s.

After the Restoration in 1660, repairs were made to the palace to allow it to be occupied by Charles II as required and to be a meeting place for his Scottish Privy Council. It was reconstructed between 1670-79 by and it is rumoured that funds and materials for this project were diverted towards the construction of Royston House. The King however did not intend to reside there himself, rather it was to be a seat of his power by proxy in the country, the seat of not just the Privy Council but also the residence of the Lord High Commissioner for Scotland. In 1679, this was James, Duke of Albany, the future King James VII (II of England). His daughter Anne, the future Queen Anne, was also resident with him. When James ascended to the throne in 1685, he set up a Jesuit college in the grounds. The following year he had the Protestant congregation that was worshipping in the Holyrood Abbey Kirk evicted and converted that building to a ceremonial Chapel Royal for his newly created Order of the Thistle. Both of these acts provoked outrage amongst the Edinburgh mob and in 1688 they would destroy the college and desecrate the chapel and its tombs following William of Orange’s taking of the throne.

Engraving after John Elphinstone esq. of the Palace and Abbey from the southeast around 1740. The roof of the Abbey Kirk would collapse in 1786 under its own weight. © Royal Collections Trust, RCIN 702898

Following the abolition of the separate Scottish Privy Council on the Act of Union in 1707, the primary function of the palace as a centre of government ceased to be and it was increasingly turned over to grace-and-favour use by the Scottish nobility. This was interrupted briefly by a royal visit in 1745 when a certain man with claim to being a future King Charles III paid an uninvited visit – Charles Edward Stuart, better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie.

An imagined scene of Charles Edward Stuart holding court at Holyroodhouse during the occupation of 1745. A highly romanticised 1880 illustration by William Brassey Hole © Edinburgh City Libraries

Jacobite excitement aside, for the next 100 or so years, British monarchs were uninterested in what was an increasingly decrepit old building in a bad neighbourhood in town; hemmed in on 2 sides by the increasingly undesirable tenements of the Canongate, on another by an irrigated meadow for the settling of sewage as fertiliser and all around by brewing on an industrial scale. It was not until 1822 that a reigning British monarch would visit, the first since Charles I in 1641; King George IV lodged in the far more comfortable surroundings of Dalkeith Palace, but was given a tour of the ancient seat of Royalty and held a reception there. The Palace would not begin to be rehabilitated until the reign of Queen Victoria, its resident nobility being slowly turfed out and it was gradually repaired, restored and improved. But no monarch or senior royal has made Holyrood a permanent home since James VI left over 420 years ago…

Scene Outside Holyrood Palace, the Arrival of George IV, watercolour sketch by Sir John James Stuart. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

Or have they? When I say “no monarch or senior royal” I mean of the British royal family, because you may be surprised to learn that the palace’s 2nd longest royal resident was none other than Charles Philippe, Comte d’Artois, younger brother of King Louis XVI and later King Charles X of France! This future monarch would spend 7 years at Holyrood from 1796 to 1803 with his mistress, Louise de Polastron, following his flight from the French Revolution. When he arrived in Edinburgh, reputedly half the city turned out to welcome him, despite his wish for a low-key reception. He would find Holyrood’s legal status as a debtor’s sanctuary particularly suited to his lifestyle choices.

Charles X as Count of Artois in 1798. Portrait by Henri-Pierre Danloux

Nearly thirty years later, he would return to Holyrood as the recently deposed King Charles X following the Second French Revolution, arriving in 1830 and staying this time for two years. He lived with his young grandson, Henri d’Artois, Count of Chambord and Duke of Bordeaux, who had very briefly spend a few days on the French throne as the last Bourbon king. Charles’ son Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême and his wife Marie-Thérèse (who, as daughter of Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette was also Charles’ niece) also fled the wrath of the French republic and made their home in town, staying at 21 Regent Terrace (now 22), overlooking the palace. Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, Duchess de Berry and sister-in-law of Louis-Antoine, lived a few doors down at number 11 (now 12) at this time.

22 Regent Terrace. CC-by-SA 4.0 SylviaStanley

While Edinburgh provided a safe retreat for the French royals, they reputedly found the Scots “tiresome and odd.” They kept themselves distant from their host city, snubbed offers from its institutions and despaired at the prevalence of Sabbatarianism. In turn were an object of fascination for the locals and the Scottish nobility were “astonished” by their “gastronomic powers“. City caricaturist John Kay captured Charles in 1796, walking hand in arm with Lord Adam Gordon, Commander-in-Chief of the Army in Scotland and Governor of Edinburgh Castle.

Charles as Comte d’Artois (right) and Lord Adam Gordon. Caricature by John Kay, 1796. © National Portrait Gallery, NPG D15136

Charles and his family left Edinburgh for Austria on September 18th 1832, his departure being a public spectacle, as the young Henri in particular was a favourite in the city. The Scotsman reported that “white gloves, white ribbons and white favours of various kinds were worn by a large proportion of the people assembled.” Many white flags can be seen in the illustration below also, these were not a symbol of surrender, but the flag of the Bourbon restoration. The departure was from the Trinity Chain Pier on the 9AM steamer , the SS United Kingdom, from Newhaven to Hamburg, which is what can be seen in the background of the painting.

The departure of Charles X to Austria with his grandson Henri, 18 September 1832. It is probably the Duke and Duchess of Angoulême stepping out of the carriage. Painting by Charles Achille d’Hardiviller

Charles was now gone for good, but did leave one lasting mark upon the city from his residency. Disliking the attention he attracted from locals wherever we went, he had William Playfair include a convenient gated path through Regent Gardens to allow him to walk unmolested to hear Mass at St. Mary’s Chapel (now St. Mary’s Metropolitan Cathedral) at Picardy Place. Whether that story is apocryphal or not, there are indeed gates at both the north and south end of the western boundary of Regent Gardens and pleasant paths laid out between the two.

Regent Gardens and the western gates, marked on the 1849 OS Town Plan of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

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The Regent Road mistake: the thread about why the infallible Robert Stevenson got Easter Road wrong

This thread was originally written and published in February 2022. It has been lightly edited and corrected as applicable for this post.

Sometimes I get asked a question to which I kind of know the answer, but want to check on my facts before I respond, and the answer ends up being much more involved that I ever thought it might be.

Q. What is it with these steps at the top of West Norton Place? What is the construction history? Are they something to do with easing the gradient of Regent Road / Montrose Terrace for trams?

Steps at the top of West Norton Place, leading to Montrose Terrace

If you don’t know this bit of Edinburgh, where we are is called Abbeymount, where beyond London Road, the top bit of the Easter Road starts climbing steeper and in a circuitous manner around the old Regent Road School, up to the junction of Montrose Terrace and Regent Road, and then drops right back down the other side towards Holyrood.

Abbeymount, looking north towards Montrose Terrace. The tenement on the corner is also called “Abbeymount”

So why does Easter Road take a winding, S-shaped course (orange line) to get to Holyrood, when logically it should just plough straight ahead at the top of Easter Road, along the cul-de-sac of West Norton Place and onwards (green line)? The short answer of course is that it wasn’t always this way. In fact it wasn’t this way at all prior to 1816. We are going to have to dive back into what this part of old Edinburgh looked like via the National Library of Scotland’s online map library.

OS 1:10,000 Survey, 1955. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Prior to 1800, most horse and cart traffic between Edinburgh and its port of Leith went via the Easter Road (the name means exactly that, it is the east road to Leith from Edinburgh) and into the city via the Canongate, past a tollbar at the Water Yett (Water Gate) via the little village of Abbeyhill. This was also the principle route to the village of Restalrig, if you continued along the magenta line and off the map to the right, and for those brave enough to try an overland journey, east and south to London past Jock’s Lodge on the white arrow.

Roy Lowland map of Scotland, c. 1755, showing the route between Edinburgh and Leith via the Canongate, Abbeyhill and Easter Road. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

At the turn of the 19th century, the land at Abbeyhill was a small estate known as “Baron Norton’s Feu” or “Norton Park“. Fletcher Norton was an English lawyer who settled in Edinburgh and established himself prominently in the world of Scottish law and ingratiated himself into local society.

Feuing map of Norton Park, 1801, by John Ainslie. Fletcher Norton’s land is coloured blue, his mansion is right of centre, highlighted. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

To the south of Norton Park was Abbey Hill itself (highlighted green), a village just outside the city boundary and really just a street of taverns, stables and smithies like you might expect as being needed on the way into and out of town. It only extended to the limits of the green boundary. In yellow is a little suburb of villas known as Maryfield (from where the current streetname comes) and in orange is the Upper or Over Quarry Holes, an ancient Edinburgh place with a fascinating and gruesome history all of its own of executions, witches, skirmishes, drownings and treachery.

Anyway, you’re probably already ahead of me and have seen those faint pencil lines on the map above and have realised they’re very close to the modern street alignment and you probably now want to know what they’re all about; so let’s move on. At the turn of the 19th century, Edinburgh has a problem (well, it had many, but let’s just look at this specific one). It was increasingly renowned and lauded for its neoclassical New Town architecture, its flourishing society and its place as a beacon of learning and enlightenment. But the physical approach into this “modern Athens” is rubbish!

The visitor arriving from the south by sea will approach from Leith. They can choose to pick their way up the footpath along the line of General Leslie’s old 1650s fortifications that will become Leith Walk, or they could take a horse and coach up the Easter Road and enter this grand modern town through the ancient and crumbling – and frankly embarrassing – Canongate. Or if you had come the hard way overland, as you approach the city you can see little of this renowned new metropolis unfold before you as your carriage bumps and sways its way past Jock’s Lodge and into the Canongate via Abbeyhill; looking out the window you could be back in the early 18th century.

Something had to be done! And who better to do it than that most eminent of Scottish Georgian engineers – Robert “Lighthouse” Stevenson. Stevenson doesn’t need many introductions, but his role in shaping, and forever changing, this end of Edinburgh I had not until now appreciated.

Robert Stevenson by John Syme, 1833. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

Stevenson planned to improve the approaches to the city from Leith by the widening and levelling of the “Walk of Leith” into that wide boulevard we now call Leith Walk. Show-piece Georgian townhouses and fine tenements were built at the top as you entered the city, at Gayfield Place, Antigua Place, Picardy Place and Baxter’s Place. And of course who should live in one of these fine new townhouses at the latter address than the Stevenson clan themselves! , at Baxter’s Place

The Stevenson house at Baxter’s Place, CC-by-SA Stephencdickson

However that was only one part of the improvements. The next scheme was the “Great Post Road from London“, the road we now know as London Road – or the western extremity of the A1. This was proposed from around 1800 and an Act of Parliament was made in 1803 approving its construction. You can see the route on this 1804 map highlighted in red, also by John Ainslie.

1804 Town Plan by Ainslie, overlaid on modern aerial photography. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

However, Stevenson and the magistrates of the city were not entirely satisfied. Although this new road created a wide, flat and straight processional approach, it meant the arriving visitor had their view of the city obscured by the Calton Hill and to get to Princes Street they would have to go up Leith Street – this spoiled the whole point of the new road! Robert Barker’s panorama from Calton Hill of 1793 shows that Leith Street was hardly a grand and splendid gateway to the city.

Panoramic view from Calton Hill, aquatint by Robert Barker, 1793. © Edinburgh City Libraries

No, what was needed was an even better way into the city; one with breathtaking and statement views of the metropolis as you entered it and with the smoothest and flattest possible route for horse carriages. The answer was obvious to one Magistrate, William Trotter (“Scotland’s greatest cabinet maker“) and also to Stevenson. Instead of the road around, below and to the north of the Calton Hill, they were going to have to go over it to the south. This might seems the obvious route with the benefit of 200 years of hindsight, but this proposal was a vast engineering challenge. That side of the Calton Hill was known as the Dow Craigs (black or dark rocks) and was all towering cliffs. There was a good reason it had never yet been built on, as this 1796 print (depicting a scene of about 1790) shows.

View from Queen’s Park with Clockmill House, unknown artist, 1796. The mast on the Calton Hill was for semaphore communication with shipping in Leith Roads © Edinburgh City Libraries

We can tell that the above print dates to before 1791, as between then and 1796, Robert Adam (“Scotland’s Greatest Architect“) built the city their new house of punishment, “the Bridewell,” on the south slopes of the Calton Hill, where St. Andrew’s House now stands. It was the magistrate William Trotter again who hady been instrumental in getting the new jail sited here, as the original idea of locating it in the Nor’ Loch Valley was anathema to him. The Bridewell was constructed from stones hewn out of the Salisbury Crags of Arthur’s Seat themselves (the ridge directly behind the Bridewell in the below print). These provided a ready supply of stone to which Stevenson would also turn to realise his grand scheme for a road around the south of the hill to connect the London Road directly with Princes Street.

The Bridewell

We are hugely fortunate that Stevenson’s beautiful drawings for his plans have survived and have been digitised by the National Library of Scotland, you can view the full map and zoom right in on it here.

Plan for a new road or street from the Muscleburgh [sic] road, at or near Jocks Lodge to Princes Street, Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

There were some other problems to solve however. Firstly, the yawning gap of the Calton Gorge had to be bridged, where the ancient Leith Wynd entered the city via the nominally independent burgh of the Calton. This required the construciton of the Regent Bridge. However, at that time Princes Street was closed off at its eastern end by a rather humdrum collection of buildings known as Shakespeare Square (where Trotter lived and worked).

Stevenson drawing of the area to be cleared for the Regent Bridge

No problem, they would just be demolished. They were hardly very grand anyway.

Demolition of Shakespeare Square as seen from the south east corner of the Register Office. Daniel Somerville, 1817 © Edinburgh City Libraries

And as for the decrepit buildings below in the ancient High and Low Calton? Demolish those too.

Demolition in the Low Calton to make way for the Regent Bridge, by Daniel Somerville, 1818. © Edinburgh City Libraries

With demolition complete, the Bridge could start to be constructed. You don’t get an idea of just how impressive the bridge is – and just how slender the arches supporting Waterloo Place are – until you see it unhidden by the buildings that have long enclosed it.

Construction of the Regent Bridge, from the Calton. Daniel Somerville, 1817. © Edinburgh City Libraries

The viaduct of Waterloo Place and the Regent Bridge allowed Stevenson to build a wide and constant road with a 1-in-35 gradient from the East End at Register House to a summit outside the Bridewell. From there the road ran relatively straight at a 1-in-26 decline for the 1,000 or so yards down to a junction with the new London Road. This required a lot of cuttings and bankings as illustrated in his plans.

Plan for a new road or street from the Muscleburgh [sic] road, at or near Jocks Lodge to Princes Street, Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Stevenson quarried the rock for the bridges, embankments, infill and road surface from Salisbury Crags, needing at least 10,920 cubic yards. Indeed in the 4 years 1815-1819, some 45-50,000 tons of stone were quarried off of the crags for this and other schemes. It was estimated that each ton of stone won from the Salisbury Crags meant 2 more lost in rubble and waste, which was simply tipped down the slopes of the crags. Some of this waste was recovered, but such was the alarm caused by the rapid and significant alteration to the appearance of the Crags that they were never quarried again after this. Work proceeded quickly and was formally completed in 1821, although the route was passable as early as 1819. Although that’s an important part of the story, it still doesn’t answer why the area around West Norton Place looks like it does now. We need to keep going. If we look closely at Stevenson’s Plan, something strikes you. There’s what looks to be a bridge at Abbeymount. Yes, there’s definitely a bridge. It’s not a very big bridge. But there’s a bridge.

Plan, the Easter Road below the new Regent RoadSouth Elevation, the Easter Road passes through this arch

Now I bet that’s news to you – it was to me! So was this bridge ever actually built? Or was it altered to the current road layout before completion? Let’s check the 1817 town plan. Yes there’s still a bridge. But the problem with the town plans of this time is they frequently record what was intended to be built, not what was. (Just look at those 2 canals there running through the Upper Quarry Holes!)

Kirkwood’s 1817 Town Plan, “Bridge” is clearly marked, but this was before the road was completed. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Winding the clock forward slightly to 1821 and what is this? Oh no! The bridge is gone! And we also see the distinctive S-shaped road up to and down from the Regent Road between Easter Road and the Canongate.

Kirkwood’s 1821 Town Plan, there’s no bridge and the road layout is very close to what is there nowadays. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

So what’s going on here? Was the road built exactly to Stevenson’s plan? Was there ever a bridge over Easter Road? Or did it change as construction proceeded to the arrangement we all know and love to this day? The answer wasn’t readily obvious in maps or the books. The next best place to look is in the newspapers of the time.

Stevenson had a great vision for his new road, envisioning three grand tiers of townhouses rising above it, impressing those entering the city but also not impeding the residents’ views south to Arthur’s Seat. He showed real determination to drive this scheme through. He didn’t just demolish buildings, but had half a graveyard dug-up and its contents exhumed and relocated to make way for his road. I think in his tunnel vision to complete it, he overlooked something; angry people in local newspapers. (No, that’s not a joke, he really did.)

Stevenson’s vision for Calton Hill. Only one of these tiers of housing would ever be built, as Regent Terrace. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

If you trawl through the green ink sections of the Scotsman and Caledonian Mercury at this time then what you will find is, even before the scheme was completed, the residents of the rapidly expanding and affluent South Side of the city were deeply aggrieved at there being two big new roads into and out of the city but none for them. They felt that having to cross the North Bridge, then turn to cross the Regent Bridge to proceed east out of the city was far too circuitous a route. His bridge at Easter Road to carry the Regent Road over was also felt to be too narrow for cart traffic to pass easily through, so he upset the carters of Leith and the Canongate too. The residents of Abbeyhill were aggrieved by the dark and narrow defile he had created.

And to be honest, the “Angry People in Local Newspapers” were right here. The new road provided a smooth and monumental access to the city from the east, but it got in the way of existing traffic and was convoluted to access from the Easter Road or Abbeyhill; the usually infallible Stevenson had made it too small. The “Commissioners for the New Road” obviously felt they had a serious problem on their hands here and as early as May 1819, it was reported that the Easter Road bridge (work on which had only started in September 1817) was to simply be filled in, and the road carried up to the Regent Road level and back down the other side by new embankments. Of course, this wasn’t ideal either as although it connected the new Road to the Easter Road, it was going to be much too for the carters. So the green ink vented its ire on behalf of the carters of Leith and the Canongate into the Caledonian Mercury once again.

What they wanted was a wider bridge, with better approaches to it. But that would have cost money, and a huge amount had already been spent, so the Commissioners went with the easy option and filled it in, and built the Easter Road up to the Regent Road and the Abbeyhill likewise up on the other side. This required a sweeping curve of new road at the top of Easter Road to reduce the gradient for the carters (although it was still a challenge!). The old alignment of Easter Road was simply cut off by the Regent Road where the bridge was infilled; this short stretch was renamed West Norton Place and it explains why it terminates in a stone retaining wall at Montrose Terrace.

1849 Ordnance Survey Town Plan showing West, East and South Norton Place, and the new curved approaches up to the Regend Road from Easter Road and Abbeyhill. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The other sides of the gushet (Scots for a triangular portion of land) formed by the new roads being East and South Norton Places– it was common in Edinburgh at this time to give the buildings different streetnames to the roads they were actually on – East Norton Place is on London Road, South Norton Place on Regent Road, later Montrose Terrace. For the convenience of people on foot, a small staircase was provided for getting between the Regent Road and West Norton Place. It’s still there, and was only recently shut off as a through route as being in disrepair.

The original staircase between West Norton Place and Regent Road / Montrose Terrace

Norton Place developed into a little block of Regency tenements in its own right at the eastern end, but remained undeveloped at the west until much later. The below image shows the junction of the original London Road alignment (right) with Stevenson’s Regent Road (which is now Montrose Terrace) on the left. The former Regent Road school, where the steps are, is to the left of the crane.

London Road, looking west, at the junction with Montrose Terrace

But what about the steps in the picture that started this thread off? Well, in 1872 or so, the Heriot Trust built a school in the sliver of land between West Norton Place and the new alignment of Easter Road. This would become the Regent Road Public School when the School Board took it over from Heriot’s, later it was the Abbeymount Techbase and more recently the Out of the Blue Abbeymount Studios. The school was split into upper and lower levels, to make use of the awkward site, with separate entrance gates into high and low-level playgrounds..

1876 OS Town Plan showing the new Heriot’s School, but at this stage no steps up to Regent Road. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland Former Regent Road School from the upper section of Easter Road

And between the maps of 1876 and 1893, our staircase is built, with tenders being sought for it in 1891 to be precise! I imagine that this was because of the huge increase in population in the neighbourhood as the tenements sprung up on Easter Road and in Abbeyhill. The original staircase was too steep and narrow for heavy public use and a wider, more direct one was built instead.

The Scotsman, 21st November 1891

All because the city had to block up the ancient “desire line” for foot traffic between Easter Road, the Abbeyhill and the Canongate 72 years previously when they filled in Stevenson’s bridge. So next time you stand at the top of Easter Road and look up the hill in front of you and wonder why the road ahead sweeps around the old school in a cutting, rather than straight ahead, the answer is that you’re looking at a Georgian on-ramp that was put in in a hurry to solve some Georgian traffic-flow problems caused by a bridge that was built too narrow.

The former Regent Road School, looking south from where Easter Road meets London Road. West Norton Place is on the left, Easter Road continues uphill and curves around the school towards Montrose Terrace.

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.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret