Development of Albany Street Edinburgh

(The maps are from the on-line map collection of the National Library of Scotland http://maps.nls.uk/towns/ There also is an excellent book, Edinburgh: Mapping the City by Chris Fleet and Daniel MacCannell.

In medieval times Edinburgh was a compact city, primarily consisting of one long street running from the castle to the Palace of Holyrood.

Map 1650

By the 18th century it had become the most densely populated city in Europe, and whilst this overcrowding created a dynamic that helped drive the new ideas and intellectual exploration of the Edinburgh Enlightenment, many of the wealthy citizens and the city’s modern thinkers no longer felt the outdated city fabric suitable for modern living. Concerned at the prospect of many of its influential citizens leaving Edinburgh, the city fathers decided to construct a New Town.

The Then Lord Provost, George Drummond, succeeded in creating land for this development by extending the boundary of the Royal Burgh to encompass the fields to the north of the North Loch, the heavily polluted body of water which occupied the valley beneath the castle. A scheme to drain the Loch was put into action, although the process was not fully completed until 1817. Two major crossing points were built to access the new land: the North Bridge in 1772, and the Earthen Mound, which began as a tip for material excavated during construction of the New Town. The Mound, as it is known today, reached its present proportions in the 1830s.

In January 1766 a design competition was held to find a suitably modern layout for the new suburb. The competition was won by the 26 year-old James Craig. His winning proposal was for a simple axial grid that would follow the natural contours of the land, with a principal thoroughfare along the ridge linking two garden squares. Two other main roads were located downhill to the north and south with two minor streets between. Several mews off the minor streets provided stable lanes for the large homes. Completing the grid were three north-south cross streets. Craig's original design had been for a centralising diagonal layout, reflecting a new era of civic Hanoverian British patriotism by echoing the design of the Union Flag. Eventually he altered the design, that, while simpler, reflected the same spirit in the names of its streets and civic spaces. Although the actual development evolved slightly differently, Craig’s initial concept of creating ‘country houses’ for this new town was retained.

Although the initial core New Town layout was not completed until 1820, by the 1800s further development was already underway around the area.

The land on which Albany Street and the neighbouring streets were built had been farmland, and lay between the New Town first phase and the edge of Broughton village. It is shown as Silver Mills on this map from 1760.

From 1128 Broughton belonged to the Church. After the Reformation, when Church lands reverted to the Crown, King James VI gave Broughton and other property to Sir Lewis Bellenden, his Justice-Clerk. Under Bellenden and his successors Broughton village expanded. A tollbooth stood where Barony Street and Broughton Street meet today, and is marked on the map below from about 1790 by ‘Toll’. It is recounted that the area was ‘notorious as the haunt of reputed witches and warlocks, who were frequently incarcerated in its old tollbooth.’ A steep, narrow road known as Broughton Loan led to the city of Edinburgh. Albany Street was built on the land marked as ‘Silver Mills’

The majority of development took place to over-arching ground plans drawn up by the city’s superintendent of works, with individual builders and architects adding elements. It is important to note that in Scotland all land was held under the Crown as the paramount of all ‘feudal subjects’. When sold the vendor relinquished all right to the title in the land in exchange for receipt of a fixed annual levy (feu duty) in perpetuity.

Development in the New Town took place by a combination of consortiums of investors and builders purchasing blocks of land, or individuals purchasing plots on which to build their own houses. As feu duty did not increase over time, developers looked to set as high a feu duty as possible, This resulted in high ground rents, and was, in part at least, one reason for Edinburgh’s preponderance of buildings of three or four stories.

One important aspect of this feuing of land was that the person owning the land and selling plots for housing normally laid down rules for height of buildings, window details, etc. It was this that resulted in the New Town’s cohesive appearance. The land to the North East was owned by George Heriot’s Hospital and they were in charge of drawing up the feuing plan.

The corner tenement on the corner with upper Dublin Street (at that time called Duke Street), now Number 1 ( The Magnum pub) was the first building to be constructed around 1802 by George Winton. The ground floor (Number 1) was built as living accommodation and later converted to commercial premises.

This map, from around 1805, shows the street split between Albion Row and Albany Street but before any houses were built Albion Row was changed to Albany Row, and the whole street named Albany Street by about 1810. Although this map shows the north east corner of Albany Street as planned for houses, the large plot lay undeveloped until the 1860s when St Mary’s Church and Number 56 were built.

This elevation (See: Edinburgh Dean of Guild Court 27 May 1815 Petitioner James Gillespie [Graham], architect and John McFarlane, WS) shows the first design by the architect James Gillespie (later Graham) for two adjoining houses, probably Numbers 34 and 36 as Gillespie and McFarquhar (not Macfarlane) were the initial residents of these two houses when built. This design was rejected and in giving its decision the court stated: ‘that on the elevation plan there is depicted as to be built upon the upper part of the petitioner’s front stair, what they may call a Portico which, in their apprehension tends to disfigure the building as there is nothing on the street with which it can assimilate & besides offers from the top, a ready access from the one house to the other by the drawing room windows, which the petitioners would for various reasons, find very unpleasant’.