Step 1 - Maps

The National Library of Scotland website - http://maps.nls.uk/towns/#edinburgh-city - contains an invaluable collection of maps of the city from the 16th century through to the 1960s, and these illustrate the development of the New Town over time. This is helpful a there were instances of a change to a street's name: e.g. upper Dublin Street was named Duke Street until the 1960s and thus there was a renumbering of the properties.

Particularly helpful for streets built before 1817 are the Robert Kirkwood maps of 1817 and 1821 as these show the completed buildings (grey black) and unbuilt areas (pink). The 1817 map also shows the house numbers for completed buildings.

While not directly related to tracking residents, the Dean of Guild Court warrant drawings site can provide interesting information about a property. See Building Plans. For example, through this site I discovered that 1 Albany Street had originally been built as a house, and converted to two shops in the 1820s.

Go to Step Two