Shane Harrison's Blog - Posts Tagged "rebus-pub-crawl"
Edinburgh -the Writers' City - 2
Edinburgh’s Old Town rises south of Prince’s Street, an audacious signature across the sky. The Castle occupies the high, westernmost part of Castle Hill. This is a volcanic plug, formed when magma cooled in a massive volcano that stood here three hundred million years ago. The hill that remains stands four hundred and thirty feet above sea level, surrounded by cliffs on three sides. Rising two hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding plain, it made for an ideal defensive location in ancient times. Picts, Gaels and Anglo Saxons have taken advantage of that and abided here. Its Gaelic name is Dun Edin, the fortress of Edin, though who, or what, Edin was, nobody knows. It was established as a burgh by King David in 1124. David ruled from 1124 to 1153. He subsequently became a saint, the only avenue of promotion open to a king, and seldom granted. In the real world, he introduced Norman style administration to Scotland, superceding the Gaelic system that prevailed.
More coloquially, Edinburgh is also known as Auld Reekie, or old smoky as we would say. Being built on a rocky outcrop, and this being the north, the fires of the citizens smoke could be seen from twenty miles away. And country folk do refer to the big city as the Big Smoke
Beneath Castle Hill lies the New Town, with Prince’s Street marking its northern edge. Edinburgh’s principal street is lined with imposing commercial buildings, though a grumpy Dub might say it is like O’Connell Street with one side missing. That, of course, allows for the view, probably the best urban panorama you are likely to see. The serrated skyline of the Old Town topped by the Castle, viewed across a sylvan park dotted with choice statues and grand buildings.
The eastern end of the street is dominated by the Balmoral Hotel and Calton Hill with its monument strewn summit. Edinburgh is also known as the Athens of the North, eighteenth century travellers noting the similarity between the cities, particularly the Acropolis floating above the lower city and Castle Hill. Artist Hugh William Williams held an exhibition in 1822 with his sketches of Edinburgh and Athens displayed alongside each other for comparison. Calton Hill became the focus for this notion with the design of the National Monument of Scotland modelled on the Parthenon in Athens. Begun in 1826 as a monument to Scotish soldiers and sailors who had died in the Napoleonic Wars, lack of funds meant it was left incomplete in 1829. This might also recall one tourist’s comments on first seeing the Acropolis; hmmm, it will be nice when it’s finished
The view over the city from here is certainly iconic. The Balmoral Tower nearby is a dominant feature on the skyline. The building was designed by William Hamilton Beattie, and completed in 1901. It operated as the North British Hotel until the early nineties, when it became the Balmoral, just in time for my arrival in Edinburgh. At least, I dreamed of staying there, while lounging with M atop Calton Hill back in the day, furiously smoking into the mist, wondering which improbable tower we would most like to occupy for the night. One writer who made her dream real was JK Rowling. She was then just beginning her series on the exploits of tyro magician Harry Potter.
The Philosopher’s Stone began life in Porto, ultimately seeing the light of day in Edinburgh where she lived from 1995. Her haunt then was the Elephant House coffee shop, its magical views of Edinburgh Castle inspiring the fantastical setting of her work. She completed her series in a room at the Balmoral, something of a point of pilgrimage for the more fabulously well to do Harry Potter fan. It will cost you a grand a night. It would take me nearly a week to spend that amount on accommodation here. Which is plenty. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows brought the epic to an end in 2007.
The Elephant House is set further south on George IV Bridge, one of a number of bridges connecting the Old Town with its surrounding lowlands. The bridge is mostly lined with buildings, but there’s a gap at the Elephant House where you can gaze into the gloomy chasm of Cowgate. A terrace to the rear of the coffee house gives wonderful views of the castle, and here Rowling liked to sit and let her imagination run riot. Sadly, the building was giutted by fire last year, and there has been no movement since towards reconstruction.
Other than the Balmoral, the south side of Prince’s street is devoted to parkland and spectacle. The main rail station, Waverley, is next door, recessed in the hollow between North Bridge and Waverley Bridge. The Mound, leading up to the Old Town, was made from excavated ground, and the lower slope hosts The Scottish National Gallery and the Royal Scottish Academy. Prince’s Street Gardens makes a wonderful foreground for views of Castle Hill. All of this was originally a stagnant pool, the North Loch, filled in on the construction of the New Town.
The Scott Monument marks the eastern entrance to the gardens. It is two hundred feet tall, the largest monument to a writer in Europe and was designed by an amateur, George Kemp. He won the competition to design a fitting memorial to the recently deceased writer and work started in 1838. The dark, gothic masterpiece was completed in 1844, but Kemp never saw that, having drowned in the Union Canal some months earlier returning home from work.
Walter Scott was born in 1771. A writer, historian and public figure, he became a personification of Scottish literature and nationhood. He was amongst the first to use history as a basis for literary fiction with The Waverly Novels. These begun in 1814 with Waverley. Scott, then best known as a poet, published them anonymously, and subsequent novels had the byline: the author of Waverley. The narratives are frequently set in 17th or 18th century Scotland; such as Rob Roy, but also in Medieval England (Ivanhoe) and during the the Crusades in the Holy Land. They became hugely popular, defining narratives of the Romantic Age, establishing in our minds, or hearts, the exalted notions of romantic love, adventure, heroism and nationality. Something that Waverley Station, named for them, scarcely does. Walter Scott died in 1832.
The National Gallery of Scotland and the Royal Scottish Academy are at the base of the Mound. Both are in the neoclassical style and designed by William Henry Playfair. The Academy opened in 1826. Its annual exhibition, like our own RHA, features the work of contemporary Scottish artists. The National was built thirty years later and features leading traditional Scottish painters along with a good collection of international art; Peter Paul Rubens, Titian,Cezanne and Turner amongst them. The Impressionists are well represented, allegedly. However, as seems to be the case in most cities these days, half the gallery is closed for renovation, which put paid to the Impressionists. The gallery is rather small to begin with, but there is a fine display of Scottish masters.
From the National Gallery I head uphill towards the Edinburgh Writers’ Museum. This should be easy to find, but wasn’t. Edinburgh is a windie city, and I am distracted by the rain, the bagpipes and the sheer joy of it all. I find myself in Bow Street and seek solace in Ian Rankin’s Rebus Pub Crawl, remembering that the Bow Bar is number four on the list. The West Bow is an ancient Edinburgh Street, rising in two levels to the giddy heights of the Castle. The Bow Bar is a determinedly traditional brown bar, dark and timbered, with floor to ceiling windows. In fact it was refitted in this style in the early 1990s. I order an IPA from the young one behind the bar, a Belma and Louise, to be precise. The bar is packed but I make for the one vacant table by the window where I pose in the shaft of honeyed light sweeping down from on high, and lose myself in the moment.
More coloquially, Edinburgh is also known as Auld Reekie, or old smoky as we would say. Being built on a rocky outcrop, and this being the north, the fires of the citizens smoke could be seen from twenty miles away. And country folk do refer to the big city as the Big Smoke
Beneath Castle Hill lies the New Town, with Prince’s Street marking its northern edge. Edinburgh’s principal street is lined with imposing commercial buildings, though a grumpy Dub might say it is like O’Connell Street with one side missing. That, of course, allows for the view, probably the best urban panorama you are likely to see. The serrated skyline of the Old Town topped by the Castle, viewed across a sylvan park dotted with choice statues and grand buildings.
The eastern end of the street is dominated by the Balmoral Hotel and Calton Hill with its monument strewn summit. Edinburgh is also known as the Athens of the North, eighteenth century travellers noting the similarity between the cities, particularly the Acropolis floating above the lower city and Castle Hill. Artist Hugh William Williams held an exhibition in 1822 with his sketches of Edinburgh and Athens displayed alongside each other for comparison. Calton Hill became the focus for this notion with the design of the National Monument of Scotland modelled on the Parthenon in Athens. Begun in 1826 as a monument to Scotish soldiers and sailors who had died in the Napoleonic Wars, lack of funds meant it was left incomplete in 1829. This might also recall one tourist’s comments on first seeing the Acropolis; hmmm, it will be nice when it’s finished
The view over the city from here is certainly iconic. The Balmoral Tower nearby is a dominant feature on the skyline. The building was designed by William Hamilton Beattie, and completed in 1901. It operated as the North British Hotel until the early nineties, when it became the Balmoral, just in time for my arrival in Edinburgh. At least, I dreamed of staying there, while lounging with M atop Calton Hill back in the day, furiously smoking into the mist, wondering which improbable tower we would most like to occupy for the night. One writer who made her dream real was JK Rowling. She was then just beginning her series on the exploits of tyro magician Harry Potter.
The Philosopher’s Stone began life in Porto, ultimately seeing the light of day in Edinburgh where she lived from 1995. Her haunt then was the Elephant House coffee shop, its magical views of Edinburgh Castle inspiring the fantastical setting of her work. She completed her series in a room at the Balmoral, something of a point of pilgrimage for the more fabulously well to do Harry Potter fan. It will cost you a grand a night. It would take me nearly a week to spend that amount on accommodation here. Which is plenty. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows brought the epic to an end in 2007.
The Elephant House is set further south on George IV Bridge, one of a number of bridges connecting the Old Town with its surrounding lowlands. The bridge is mostly lined with buildings, but there’s a gap at the Elephant House where you can gaze into the gloomy chasm of Cowgate. A terrace to the rear of the coffee house gives wonderful views of the castle, and here Rowling liked to sit and let her imagination run riot. Sadly, the building was giutted by fire last year, and there has been no movement since towards reconstruction.
Other than the Balmoral, the south side of Prince’s street is devoted to parkland and spectacle. The main rail station, Waverley, is next door, recessed in the hollow between North Bridge and Waverley Bridge. The Mound, leading up to the Old Town, was made from excavated ground, and the lower slope hosts The Scottish National Gallery and the Royal Scottish Academy. Prince’s Street Gardens makes a wonderful foreground for views of Castle Hill. All of this was originally a stagnant pool, the North Loch, filled in on the construction of the New Town.
The Scott Monument marks the eastern entrance to the gardens. It is two hundred feet tall, the largest monument to a writer in Europe and was designed by an amateur, George Kemp. He won the competition to design a fitting memorial to the recently deceased writer and work started in 1838. The dark, gothic masterpiece was completed in 1844, but Kemp never saw that, having drowned in the Union Canal some months earlier returning home from work.
Walter Scott was born in 1771. A writer, historian and public figure, he became a personification of Scottish literature and nationhood. He was amongst the first to use history as a basis for literary fiction with The Waverly Novels. These begun in 1814 with Waverley. Scott, then best known as a poet, published them anonymously, and subsequent novels had the byline: the author of Waverley. The narratives are frequently set in 17th or 18th century Scotland; such as Rob Roy, but also in Medieval England (Ivanhoe) and during the the Crusades in the Holy Land. They became hugely popular, defining narratives of the Romantic Age, establishing in our minds, or hearts, the exalted notions of romantic love, adventure, heroism and nationality. Something that Waverley Station, named for them, scarcely does. Walter Scott died in 1832.
The National Gallery of Scotland and the Royal Scottish Academy are at the base of the Mound. Both are in the neoclassical style and designed by William Henry Playfair. The Academy opened in 1826. Its annual exhibition, like our own RHA, features the work of contemporary Scottish artists. The National was built thirty years later and features leading traditional Scottish painters along with a good collection of international art; Peter Paul Rubens, Titian,Cezanne and Turner amongst them. The Impressionists are well represented, allegedly. However, as seems to be the case in most cities these days, half the gallery is closed for renovation, which put paid to the Impressionists. The gallery is rather small to begin with, but there is a fine display of Scottish masters.
From the National Gallery I head uphill towards the Edinburgh Writers’ Museum. This should be easy to find, but wasn’t. Edinburgh is a windie city, and I am distracted by the rain, the bagpipes and the sheer joy of it all. I find myself in Bow Street and seek solace in Ian Rankin’s Rebus Pub Crawl, remembering that the Bow Bar is number four on the list. The West Bow is an ancient Edinburgh Street, rising in two levels to the giddy heights of the Castle. The Bow Bar is a determinedly traditional brown bar, dark and timbered, with floor to ceiling windows. In fact it was refitted in this style in the early 1990s. I order an IPA from the young one behind the bar, a Belma and Louise, to be precise. The bar is packed but I make for the one vacant table by the window where I pose in the shaft of honeyed light sweeping down from on high, and lose myself in the moment.
Edinburgh - The Writers' City - 3
The Edinburgh Writers’ Museum is a good place to get a grounding in the city’s literature. It features three writers who are prominent in the historical canon: Robert Burns, Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson. The building itself is well hidden, being off one of those many narrow, windie ways that drop down from the spine of the Royal Mile to the city of the plains below. Having missed it the day before, I find myself back at the summit of the Old Town again, clearer of mind and vision, determined to reach my target. The Old Town is, of course, crowned with the Castle fronted by the famous Esplanade, conjuring visions of strapping Scotsmen in kilts blowing a multitude of bagpipes. From here descends the Royal Mile, main street Scotland and a mixed wonderland. After the sedate aura of the Camera Obscura, the street is again thronged and rings with the refrains of serial bagpipers busking in doorways.
Helpfully, there’s a tourist pointing down the laneway by a souvenir shop, which turns out to be Lady Stair’s Close connecting Lawnmarket and the Mound. A close is a gated enclosure, for the posher sort who didn’t want to rub soldiers with regular folk. A wynde, meanwhile, was open to all. The narrow lane widens to reveal a quaint, but grand, turretted house. Lady Stair’s House was built in 1622 for Sir William Gray, and was long known for his widow, Lady Gray, who continued to live there after his death. Their granddaughter Elizabeth Dundas, became Lady Stair and that name is now attached to the building. In fact, the original house was largely demolished in an extensive renewal of the Old Town in the late nineteenth century. The new house is a cunning medieval pastiche by Arts and Crafts architect Stewart Henbest Capper. Other than the inscribed lintel little above ground remains from the original. All was passed on to the Burgh in 1907 for use as a museum by then owner, Archibald Primrose, the Earl of Rosebery. The house overlooks Makars’ Court. Makar is the Sots term for a writer, or bard. It was appled here in 1997 when twelve writers were commemorated with quotes from their work engraved on pavement slabs. There are over forty there now. Amongst them, one from Walter Scott:Walter Scott: This is my own, my native land.
I mooch around for a while, as the preceeding tourist points at various parts of the building. Entrance is free and offers a series of nestled portals into a number of worlds. There’s Robert Burns, Scotland’s Bard, who epitomises the traditional national identity in the music of language. Born in Ayr in 1759, he wrote in English, and the Guid Scots Tongue, and indeed often somewhere in between. Scots is the old English of the Anglo Saxon settlement of Britian and is preserved in Burns’s poetry. His first collection Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, includes To a Mouse, a startling ode to empathy.
Meanwhile, Address to a Haggis is the focal ceremony of Burns Night, another Scottish National Holiday in Winter. Saint Andrew’s Day in November, and Hogmanay on New Year’s Eve being the others. The Haggis, served with tatties (Potatoes) and neaps (parsnips), is a rite of passage for anyone wishing to eat their way through Scotland. White pudding is our equivalent, humbler than the exalted haggis; Great Chieftain o’ the Pudding Race, as Rabbie puts it. Burns is also responsible for Auld Lang Syne, which he adapted from an ancient source. It is a song of farewell, but implicitly of unextinguishable friendship. It is the standard farewell to the old year, and a welcome to the new throughout the English speaking world. And then there’s Jools Holland. Burns himself bade farewell to this earth in 1796, at the age of thirty seven.
The museum’s Walter Scott display includes the first edition of Waverley and the press on which the Waverley novels were printed, James Ballantyne’s handpress. There’s a lifesize tableau to bring you into that world.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894) completes the trio. An illustration for Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes 1879 is based on the quote:
I lay lazily smoking and studying the colour of the sky, as we call the void of space, from where it showed a reddish grey behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue black beween the stars,
The line speaks to all travellers who have reflected on their travels. Writers should stensil it to their bedroom ceiling; make it the motto of their dreams, and their inspiration on waking. Consider also Treasure Island, Kidnapped, A Child’s Garden of Verses. There’s a ring Stevenson received as a present from a Samoan chief, engraved Tusitala, signifying the teller of tales. Stevenson was certainly a masterful weaver of tales, from the raw material of his travels, his imagination, and the humdrum of life. His wardrobe is here, made by the infamous Deacon Brodie. Brodie was a renowned cabinet maker and locksmith, skills he also harnessed when moonlighting as a burglar. His split life was a possible inspiration for the Strange Case of Doctor Jeckyll and Mister Hyde. Stevenson died in Samoa and is buried there beneath the epitaph: Home is the sailor home from the sea.
Drunk from the joys of literature, I feel an actual drink would be in order. I wind my way downhill past The Bow, and on to Grassmarket, a long plaza in the shadow of Castle Rock, with a concentration of eateries and drinking dens. Cobblestoned and tree lined, it’s perfect for an outdoor drink on a sunny day. Dating back to the late fourteenth century, the area for centuries operaed as a horse and cattle market. Some of the hostelries are indeed ancient and ripe with story. William and his sister Dorothy Worsworth stayed at the White Hart, as did Robbie Burns, and more balefully, the murderers Burke and Hare. Though not all at the same time. The Wordsworth’s stay is recorded in Dorothy’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, 1803. The account features the six week sojourn of the Wordsworth’s through the Scottish Highlands with their friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Their journey by jaunting car was something of a Romantic epic, amd a homage to such Scottish literary and historic figures as Burns, Scott, Rob Roy and William Wallace. It was published posthumously in 1874.
Helpfully, there’s a tourist pointing down the laneway by a souvenir shop, which turns out to be Lady Stair’s Close connecting Lawnmarket and the Mound. A close is a gated enclosure, for the posher sort who didn’t want to rub soldiers with regular folk. A wynde, meanwhile, was open to all. The narrow lane widens to reveal a quaint, but grand, turretted house. Lady Stair’s House was built in 1622 for Sir William Gray, and was long known for his widow, Lady Gray, who continued to live there after his death. Their granddaughter Elizabeth Dundas, became Lady Stair and that name is now attached to the building. In fact, the original house was largely demolished in an extensive renewal of the Old Town in the late nineteenth century. The new house is a cunning medieval pastiche by Arts and Crafts architect Stewart Henbest Capper. Other than the inscribed lintel little above ground remains from the original. All was passed on to the Burgh in 1907 for use as a museum by then owner, Archibald Primrose, the Earl of Rosebery. The house overlooks Makars’ Court. Makar is the Sots term for a writer, or bard. It was appled here in 1997 when twelve writers were commemorated with quotes from their work engraved on pavement slabs. There are over forty there now. Amongst them, one from Walter Scott:Walter Scott: This is my own, my native land.
I mooch around for a while, as the preceeding tourist points at various parts of the building. Entrance is free and offers a series of nestled portals into a number of worlds. There’s Robert Burns, Scotland’s Bard, who epitomises the traditional national identity in the music of language. Born in Ayr in 1759, he wrote in English, and the Guid Scots Tongue, and indeed often somewhere in between. Scots is the old English of the Anglo Saxon settlement of Britian and is preserved in Burns’s poetry. His first collection Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, includes To a Mouse, a startling ode to empathy.
Meanwhile, Address to a Haggis is the focal ceremony of Burns Night, another Scottish National Holiday in Winter. Saint Andrew’s Day in November, and Hogmanay on New Year’s Eve being the others. The Haggis, served with tatties (Potatoes) and neaps (parsnips), is a rite of passage for anyone wishing to eat their way through Scotland. White pudding is our equivalent, humbler than the exalted haggis; Great Chieftain o’ the Pudding Race, as Rabbie puts it. Burns is also responsible for Auld Lang Syne, which he adapted from an ancient source. It is a song of farewell, but implicitly of unextinguishable friendship. It is the standard farewell to the old year, and a welcome to the new throughout the English speaking world. And then there’s Jools Holland. Burns himself bade farewell to this earth in 1796, at the age of thirty seven.
The museum’s Walter Scott display includes the first edition of Waverley and the press on which the Waverley novels were printed, James Ballantyne’s handpress. There’s a lifesize tableau to bring you into that world.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894) completes the trio. An illustration for Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes 1879 is based on the quote:
I lay lazily smoking and studying the colour of the sky, as we call the void of space, from where it showed a reddish grey behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue black beween the stars,
The line speaks to all travellers who have reflected on their travels. Writers should stensil it to their bedroom ceiling; make it the motto of their dreams, and their inspiration on waking. Consider also Treasure Island, Kidnapped, A Child’s Garden of Verses. There’s a ring Stevenson received as a present from a Samoan chief, engraved Tusitala, signifying the teller of tales. Stevenson was certainly a masterful weaver of tales, from the raw material of his travels, his imagination, and the humdrum of life. His wardrobe is here, made by the infamous Deacon Brodie. Brodie was a renowned cabinet maker and locksmith, skills he also harnessed when moonlighting as a burglar. His split life was a possible inspiration for the Strange Case of Doctor Jeckyll and Mister Hyde. Stevenson died in Samoa and is buried there beneath the epitaph: Home is the sailor home from the sea.
Drunk from the joys of literature, I feel an actual drink would be in order. I wind my way downhill past The Bow, and on to Grassmarket, a long plaza in the shadow of Castle Rock, with a concentration of eateries and drinking dens. Cobblestoned and tree lined, it’s perfect for an outdoor drink on a sunny day. Dating back to the late fourteenth century, the area for centuries operaed as a horse and cattle market. Some of the hostelries are indeed ancient and ripe with story. William and his sister Dorothy Worsworth stayed at the White Hart, as did Robbie Burns, and more balefully, the murderers Burke and Hare. Though not all at the same time. The Wordsworth’s stay is recorded in Dorothy’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, 1803. The account features the six week sojourn of the Wordsworth’s through the Scottish Highlands with their friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Their journey by jaunting car was something of a Romantic epic, amd a homage to such Scottish literary and historic figures as Burns, Scott, Rob Roy and William Wallace. It was published posthumously in 1874.
Edinburgh - The Writers' City - 4
At the end of Grassmarket the road divides. Straight on and you pass under the bridges that buttress the Old Town. Candlemaker Row slopes upward to join George IV Bridge with the wall of Greyfriars Churchyard along one side. The Grey Friars themselves were Franciscans whose monastery was dissolved in 1560 as Scotland was gripped by the Reformation. It was a place of free assembly and The Covenanters signed the National Covenant here in 1638. This asserted the primacy of the Scottish Presbyterian Church but their revolt was soon defeated in the Battle of Bothwell Bridge. Following the battle, four hundred prisoners were held in a section of the churchyard, and it became known as the Covenanters Prison.
Most famous of the kirkyard’s former residents is a wee dog. Greyfriars Bobby. A Skye Terrier, he belonged to a nightwatchman with the city police, John Gray. When Gray died in 1858, it is said that Bobby, his watchdog, kept watch at the graveside until its own death fourteen years later. By this time he had become well known, to the extent that Edinburgh’s Lord Provost, William Chambers had the dog licensed and collared. A year after Bobby died, English philanthropist, Lady Angela Burdett-Coutts was so touched by the story that she had a statue erected in is memory. Outside the gates you’ll find the granite fountain surmounted by a lifesize bronze statue of Bobby.
The legend has grown. I saw the Disney film back in the early sixties. This was based on Eleanor Atkinson’s novel of 1812 and has a different version of events. Here, John Gray is a farmer who comes to Edinburgh and dies. A major character is Mr John Traill, of Trail’s Temperance Coffee House, who in real life claimed Jock and Bobby were regular visitors. As the coffee house was opened four years after Gray’s death, it may be something of a shaggy dog story. A more recent film in 2005 controversially starred a West Highland Terrier playing Bobby, an example of cultural appropriation. The Temperance Coffee House was located outside the gates, and is now, thankfully a bar. Greyfriars Bobby’s Bar is an old style pub, with outside tables to catch the midday sun
Around the corner on Forrest Road is Sandy Bell’s, another pub on the Rankin Rebus Pub Crawl. This is a folk bar with evening sessions featuring Irish and Scottish traditional music. It’s a century old and was first known as the Forrest Hill. Blossoming in the folk heyday of the sixties, Barbara Dickson, Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty are amongst its alumni. In the 80s a landlord installed a puggie or slot machine, bane of British pubs, but the regulars delivered an ultimatum, either it goes or we go, and it lasted all of a day. Sandy Bell’s became the official name in the nineties, as that’s what everyone called it, dating back to the twenties when the pub was owned by a Mrs Bell.
Across the street is the Scottish Museum. This is two buildings. The Royal Museum was built in the 1860s and houses displays of industry, science, technology and natural history. The modern building from 1998 is a formidable and concrete slab in the Le Corbusier style, which paradoxically concentrates on history and antiquities. Admission is free. The old building has that Great Exhibition air to it; the Grand Gallery of cast iron and light was inspired by the Crystal Palace.
The statue guarding the entrance is of William Chambers, who asides from his love of dogs, had a notable career. Born in 1800, he opened his first bookshop at nineteen and established a publishing empire with his younger brother Robert. As Lord Provost of Edinburgh in the 1860s he initiated major street construction projects hereabouts.
Chambers Street connects to the North and South Bridges joining Old and New Towns and bisected by the Royal Mile. I’m searching for the Royal Oak, another stop on the Rebus Pub Crawl. Hidden down Infirmary Road, its modest entrance leads to a welcoming traditional bar. The pub is two centuries old and is long established as an informal folk music venue. It features in Rankin’s Set in Darkness, eleventh in the Rebus series set during the birth of Scottish devolution. A duo discusses politics at the upstairs bar while I am engaged by the young lady serving. She tells me tales of growing up on Scotland’s east coast and I can thread in vague experiences of my own including Inverness and the shores of Lough Ness. There be monsters and dragons, and bagpipe festivals, and ancient standing stones where you might catch a glimpse of Catriona Balfe flitting through timezones in a diaphanous shift. But I digress. The lady merges the two conversational groups and now we argue over the travails of Mister Trump and his chances of reelection. There’s a smoke break, and I’m left alone with the mirrors and memories, and haunting lines of musicians who have gone or yet to visit.
Last on Rankin’s list is Bennetts, another old style pub on the southern approaches. It’s on my route home to Morningside, retracing my steps back to Tollcross and onto Leven Street. Bennetts is next door to the King’s Theatre, currently closed for renovations. There’s been a pub here since 1839, its current incarnation dates to the start of the twentieth century, about the time the theatre first opened. It’s a beautiful Victorian bar with high windows, wood and brass fittings, an open fire and snug. Here I spy the bagpipe busker from outside the Academy, his weaponry laid out on the table on his LGBQT flag. The barman proposes a chocolate flavoured stout which hails, I think, from Skye. Meanwhile, beyond Bennett’s huge windows, the sky above has opened and the deluge pours upon all without. I should stay sheltered I suppose.
Further on, Bruntsfield Place rejoices in the high, neo-gothic architecture typical of the city. Bruntsfield is birthplace of Muriel Spark. Her novel the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was published in 1961. It was filmed in 1969 starring Maggie Smith. The film depicts Jean living in this area with the school based on nearby Morningside. On one of my all too many days off school I snuck into a Dublin cinema to catch this, becoming lost in a world of Scottish schoolgirls, bohemian art and some challenging social political theory. Maggie Smith won an Oscar. I’m in m’prime!
Bruntsfield Links provides a welcome slice of greenery on the city’s edge. It is, perhaps, the founding place for the ancient game of golf. The Golf Tavern boasts of dating back to 1456. Certainly, the Links were the playground of the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society, now known as the Royal, which claims to be the oldest golf society in the world, formed in 1735. They became a club and moved to their own course in 1890. There is still a pitch and putt course on the Links, but most is now a public park.
From the seats outside I have a view across the links to Arthur’s Seat. Arthur’s Seat is a remnant of the ancient volcano, along with Calton Hill, and the Castle Crag. It has featured frequently in the city’s literature, with many appearances in the Rebus series. One particularly evocative scene occurs in James Hogg’s fantastical novel the Confessions of a Justified Sinner of 1824. A broken spectre on the misty mountain makes for an eerie culmination in the struggle between the two sibling protagonists, George and Robert. Robert and his evil alter ego, Gil Martin is another inspiration for Jekyll and Hyde.
The Arthur in question is said to be the legendary king of the Britons who halted the AngloSaxon advance in the sixth century. Those events and their people are lost in the mists of time. Rather as Arthur’s Seat is now. A fog, or haar, has swept over the Old Town, so that as I turn to say farewell, the spires and peaks and castle of Auld Reikie float on its murky cushion, slipping off towards the horizon. And are gone.
Most famous of the kirkyard’s former residents is a wee dog. Greyfriars Bobby. A Skye Terrier, he belonged to a nightwatchman with the city police, John Gray. When Gray died in 1858, it is said that Bobby, his watchdog, kept watch at the graveside until its own death fourteen years later. By this time he had become well known, to the extent that Edinburgh’s Lord Provost, William Chambers had the dog licensed and collared. A year after Bobby died, English philanthropist, Lady Angela Burdett-Coutts was so touched by the story that she had a statue erected in is memory. Outside the gates you’ll find the granite fountain surmounted by a lifesize bronze statue of Bobby.
The legend has grown. I saw the Disney film back in the early sixties. This was based on Eleanor Atkinson’s novel of 1812 and has a different version of events. Here, John Gray is a farmer who comes to Edinburgh and dies. A major character is Mr John Traill, of Trail’s Temperance Coffee House, who in real life claimed Jock and Bobby were regular visitors. As the coffee house was opened four years after Gray’s death, it may be something of a shaggy dog story. A more recent film in 2005 controversially starred a West Highland Terrier playing Bobby, an example of cultural appropriation. The Temperance Coffee House was located outside the gates, and is now, thankfully a bar. Greyfriars Bobby’s Bar is an old style pub, with outside tables to catch the midday sun
Around the corner on Forrest Road is Sandy Bell’s, another pub on the Rankin Rebus Pub Crawl. This is a folk bar with evening sessions featuring Irish and Scottish traditional music. It’s a century old and was first known as the Forrest Hill. Blossoming in the folk heyday of the sixties, Barbara Dickson, Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty are amongst its alumni. In the 80s a landlord installed a puggie or slot machine, bane of British pubs, but the regulars delivered an ultimatum, either it goes or we go, and it lasted all of a day. Sandy Bell’s became the official name in the nineties, as that’s what everyone called it, dating back to the twenties when the pub was owned by a Mrs Bell.
Across the street is the Scottish Museum. This is two buildings. The Royal Museum was built in the 1860s and houses displays of industry, science, technology and natural history. The modern building from 1998 is a formidable and concrete slab in the Le Corbusier style, which paradoxically concentrates on history and antiquities. Admission is free. The old building has that Great Exhibition air to it; the Grand Gallery of cast iron and light was inspired by the Crystal Palace.
The statue guarding the entrance is of William Chambers, who asides from his love of dogs, had a notable career. Born in 1800, he opened his first bookshop at nineteen and established a publishing empire with his younger brother Robert. As Lord Provost of Edinburgh in the 1860s he initiated major street construction projects hereabouts.
Chambers Street connects to the North and South Bridges joining Old and New Towns and bisected by the Royal Mile. I’m searching for the Royal Oak, another stop on the Rebus Pub Crawl. Hidden down Infirmary Road, its modest entrance leads to a welcoming traditional bar. The pub is two centuries old and is long established as an informal folk music venue. It features in Rankin’s Set in Darkness, eleventh in the Rebus series set during the birth of Scottish devolution. A duo discusses politics at the upstairs bar while I am engaged by the young lady serving. She tells me tales of growing up on Scotland’s east coast and I can thread in vague experiences of my own including Inverness and the shores of Lough Ness. There be monsters and dragons, and bagpipe festivals, and ancient standing stones where you might catch a glimpse of Catriona Balfe flitting through timezones in a diaphanous shift. But I digress. The lady merges the two conversational groups and now we argue over the travails of Mister Trump and his chances of reelection. There’s a smoke break, and I’m left alone with the mirrors and memories, and haunting lines of musicians who have gone or yet to visit.
Last on Rankin’s list is Bennetts, another old style pub on the southern approaches. It’s on my route home to Morningside, retracing my steps back to Tollcross and onto Leven Street. Bennetts is next door to the King’s Theatre, currently closed for renovations. There’s been a pub here since 1839, its current incarnation dates to the start of the twentieth century, about the time the theatre first opened. It’s a beautiful Victorian bar with high windows, wood and brass fittings, an open fire and snug. Here I spy the bagpipe busker from outside the Academy, his weaponry laid out on the table on his LGBQT flag. The barman proposes a chocolate flavoured stout which hails, I think, from Skye. Meanwhile, beyond Bennett’s huge windows, the sky above has opened and the deluge pours upon all without. I should stay sheltered I suppose.
Further on, Bruntsfield Place rejoices in the high, neo-gothic architecture typical of the city. Bruntsfield is birthplace of Muriel Spark. Her novel the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was published in 1961. It was filmed in 1969 starring Maggie Smith. The film depicts Jean living in this area with the school based on nearby Morningside. On one of my all too many days off school I snuck into a Dublin cinema to catch this, becoming lost in a world of Scottish schoolgirls, bohemian art and some challenging social political theory. Maggie Smith won an Oscar. I’m in m’prime!
Bruntsfield Links provides a welcome slice of greenery on the city’s edge. It is, perhaps, the founding place for the ancient game of golf. The Golf Tavern boasts of dating back to 1456. Certainly, the Links were the playground of the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society, now known as the Royal, which claims to be the oldest golf society in the world, formed in 1735. They became a club and moved to their own course in 1890. There is still a pitch and putt course on the Links, but most is now a public park.
From the seats outside I have a view across the links to Arthur’s Seat. Arthur’s Seat is a remnant of the ancient volcano, along with Calton Hill, and the Castle Crag. It has featured frequently in the city’s literature, with many appearances in the Rebus series. One particularly evocative scene occurs in James Hogg’s fantastical novel the Confessions of a Justified Sinner of 1824. A broken spectre on the misty mountain makes for an eerie culmination in the struggle between the two sibling protagonists, George and Robert. Robert and his evil alter ego, Gil Martin is another inspiration for Jekyll and Hyde.
The Arthur in question is said to be the legendary king of the Britons who halted the AngloSaxon advance in the sixth century. Those events and their people are lost in the mists of time. Rather as Arthur’s Seat is now. A fog, or haar, has swept over the Old Town, so that as I turn to say farewell, the spires and peaks and castle of Auld Reikie float on its murky cushion, slipping off towards the horizon. And are gone.
