Edinburgh Old Town and New Town

‘After a noisy breakfast of hot porridge and small beer, their mother spoke: ‘Come on John, don’t be sad. You’re going into the world and you’re going to live in Edinburgh High Street. Uncle Somers calls it the most magnificent street in Britain. But he’s planning to move to the New Town.They went out into the farmyard and walked to the stable.’ This is a quote from The Claudians: gardens, landscapes, reason and faith: John Claudius Loudon and Claudius Buchanan, Tom Turner (Kindle, 2024). 

More about Edinburgh New Town

Tom Turner explains the design of the New Town in the above video. 

John Claudius Loudon, who lived on the fringe of Edinburgh’s New Town (with the Dicksons in Leith Terrace) wrote that: “The character and general magnitude of buildings in towns ought to have some relation to the nature of the surface, the climate, and the surrounding country. A better illustration of the good effect which this would have cannot be given, than by referring to Edinburgh. There the old town, or original city, is built upon a high ridge of rock surrounded by a deep valley, formerly a large lake, and which on one side separates it from a level plain. Upon this plain is now built the new town, in regular streets and squares, the houses of which are all in the Grecian style, and built of a most beautiful yellow freestone. The old town, on the other hand, has only one principal street, which is conducted in a crooked direction along the top of the ridge, commencing on a plain where is built the Royal palace of Holyrood House, and after proceeding a mile up this ridge terminates abruptly with a large fort or castle built upon a rock, which on three sides rises perpendicularly from the valley or lake. The houses on each side of this street are very high, but diminish as they descend toward the valleys: they are all Gothic, or at least so irregular and mixed as not in general to be denominated Grecian. They are black by age and smoke, and from the new town form a contrast which is striking and pleasing. This characteristic irregularity in form and disposition, and the black colour of the old town, the beautiful symmetry and regularity of the new, the spacious bridge thrown across the valley which connects them, and the towering hills, and romantic scenery in the immediate vicinity of the whole, renders it, as confessed by all travellers, the most beautiful city in Europe.”