OT: Edinburgh and the Royal Mile. Dial-up warnning lots of pictures!
Hussulo
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Edinburgh's Royal mile
"The largest, longest and finest street for Buildings and Number of Inhabitants, not only in Britain, but in the World..."
(Daniel Defoe, 1723)
For those of you that haven't been I thought I'd share some pictures.
This is looking up the Royal mile (from Canongate).
The Canongate Tolbooth is the oldest remaining building in Edinburgh's Canongate. The Tolbooth centre for the independent burgh of the Canongate, which developed outside the walls of Edinburgh. It was built in 1591, in the French style, by the feudal superior of the Burgh, Sir Lewis Bellenden of Auchintoul.
There is a pub called the worlds end at where Canongate ended and the walls of the old city of Edinburgh stood. This was literally the end of the world for many poor people. Some people born into poverty lived and died within the walls of Edinburgh. This is because there was a toll or a fee to pay for entering into Edinburgh. If you were poor, you could leave but you couldn't afford to enter back in again.
Because of the lack of space and the growing population they built higher and higher buildings in Edinburgh. The first five floors tended to be built from stone and the higher five or six floors from wood. The trouble was the wood was untreated so would sometimes collapse killing whole family's at a time and fire spread easily (The world's first municipal fire service was founded in Edinburgh in 1824).
Back to the older days...There was no sewage system and all your urine and faeces where kept in a bucket along with any other household waste. At ten o'clock when the church bells rung you were allowed to open your window and through it out onto the street. It was common practise to shout gardiloo, which roughly translates from a French word for "mind the water". Bearing in mind the streets were only three feet wide if you were walking home from the pub and heard this shout you would quickly reply "hold your hand" they should then refrain from throwing the contents of the bucket onto you. If you were a tourist into the city and you heard the shout gardiloo, the first thing you would do would be to look up....
John Knox House
The original 15th century house has been largely unaltered since the 1550's when the Mosman family, Goldsmiths to Mary Queen of Scots, remodelled the house. John Knox, leader of the Scottish Reformation and founder of the Presbyterian Church, lived here for a short time before he died here in 1572
This is looking down the Royal Mile.
Looking through onto Sir Walter Scott's monument.
Edinburgh castle at sunset.
Royal mile at night.
The next set of pictures are from a ghost walk we did at night. They take you down into the vaults, or the old underground city beneath Edinburgh's current city.
If you look closely you can see orbs (no one knows what orbs truly are, just that they seem to be found mainly in areas where there is ghost activity)
Before entering the vaults we had to go through the torture museum
This is how dark it was, we only had one candle which the guide carried, and the occasional candle in some rooms.
On a couple of occasions the guide extinguished his candle.
Same picture taken with my camera using it's flash:
These are pictures of the vaults taken with a flash:
That's all, I hope you enjoyed it.
"The largest, longest and finest street for Buildings and Number of Inhabitants, not only in Britain, but in the World..."
(Daniel Defoe, 1723)
For those of you that haven't been I thought I'd share some pictures.
This is looking up the Royal mile (from Canongate).
The Canongate Tolbooth is the oldest remaining building in Edinburgh's Canongate. The Tolbooth centre for the independent burgh of the Canongate, which developed outside the walls of Edinburgh. It was built in 1591, in the French style, by the feudal superior of the Burgh, Sir Lewis Bellenden of Auchintoul.
There is a pub called the worlds end at where Canongate ended and the walls of the old city of Edinburgh stood. This was literally the end of the world for many poor people. Some people born into poverty lived and died within the walls of Edinburgh. This is because there was a toll or a fee to pay for entering into Edinburgh. If you were poor, you could leave but you couldn't afford to enter back in again.
Because of the lack of space and the growing population they built higher and higher buildings in Edinburgh. The first five floors tended to be built from stone and the higher five or six floors from wood. The trouble was the wood was untreated so would sometimes collapse killing whole family's at a time and fire spread easily (The world's first municipal fire service was founded in Edinburgh in 1824).
Back to the older days...There was no sewage system and all your urine and faeces where kept in a bucket along with any other household waste. At ten o'clock when the church bells rung you were allowed to open your window and through it out onto the street. It was common practise to shout gardiloo, which roughly translates from a French word for "mind the water". Bearing in mind the streets were only three feet wide if you were walking home from the pub and heard this shout you would quickly reply "hold your hand" they should then refrain from throwing the contents of the bucket onto you. If you were a tourist into the city and you heard the shout gardiloo, the first thing you would do would be to look up....
John Knox House
The original 15th century house has been largely unaltered since the 1550's when the Mosman family, Goldsmiths to Mary Queen of Scots, remodelled the house. John Knox, leader of the Scottish Reformation and founder of the Presbyterian Church, lived here for a short time before he died here in 1572
This is looking down the Royal Mile.
Looking through onto Sir Walter Scott's monument.
Edinburgh castle at sunset.
Royal mile at night.
The next set of pictures are from a ghost walk we did at night. They take you down into the vaults, or the old underground city beneath Edinburgh's current city.
If you look closely you can see orbs (no one knows what orbs truly are, just that they seem to be found mainly in areas where there is ghost activity)
Before entering the vaults we had to go through the torture museum
This is how dark it was, we only had one candle which the guide carried, and the occasional candle in some rooms.
On a couple of occasions the guide extinguished his candle.
Same picture taken with my camera using it's flash:
These are pictures of the vaults taken with a flash:
That's all, I hope you enjoyed it.
0
Comments
DPOTD-3
'Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'
CU #3245 B.N.A. #428
Don
Very nice picture show, thanks for sharing. Would love to visit Scotland sometime, we have always intended to, but it seems like I end up further east in Europe everytime I fly across the Atlantic.
I think this is part of the allure of coins, that if I can't or couldn't be there, at least I have a solid tie to the location or era.
Doug, Dave and Don if you do make it over to Edinburgh,
drop me a PM before hand and we could maybe meet up and I could show you round.
Regards,
Hus
I think it was this one:
http://www.historic-uk.com/DestinationsUK/EdinburghVaults.htm
There were 3 or 4 tours but most seem to finish at about 4pm. This one went on until 9pm so we went at 8pm.
I wouldn't mind going on some other ones. Have you been on any?
I enjoyed my whole experience in Scotland. The people were GREAT. The countryside was wonderful. The food was excellent. Pubs were fun. And Edinburgh was a GEM.
Thank you for the OP!
Did you enjoy an Irn-Bru (Iron Bru) whist in country? Yummie!
Cheers,
Bob
I thought it was a fancy name for $hite
P.s. I like Iron-Bru as well. It's different.
the_northern_trading_company
ace@airadv.net
I've seen paranormal freaks go crazy over less prominent "orbs" in photos.
What was the occasion for the fireworks, or do they even need an occasion?
Is it me, or is that "decapitator" blade awfully short and stubby looking for its stated purpose?
The torture implements kind of bring to mind the climactic scenes in the "Braveheart" film. Yeah, yeah, I know- you probably think of that as silly Americanized Hollywood fluff, and rightfully so, but it did bring a lot of interest in things Scottish to this side of the pond. I of course was interested in Scotland before that- 'twas upon seeing another, even cheesier Hollywood production (the original "Highlander" film) that got me interested in my Scots-Irish family heritage. (Historically cheesy though they might be, both of those movies were quite entertaining, and I saw them both multiple times- that's about as close to Scotland as I'm likely to get for the foreseeable future- except for your fine guided tours- thanks!)