The New Town Gardens are a collection of around 30 mostly private gardens and parks within the Edinburgh New Town Conservation Area spread across the New Town and the West End, listed as a heritage designation since March 2001. The gardens comprise a series of 18th and 19th century town gardens, squares and walks, established contemporaneously with the New Town of Edinburgh between 1767 and around 1850. [1]
Most of the gardens were established contemporaneously to the New Town, and north West End of Edinburgh.
Some have unique history such as the Hopetoun Crescent Gardens, which were the original site of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. [2] The Queen Street Central gardens have a pond with an island, said to have inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island . [3]
Each garden has different rules concerning criteria for membership and access, with some permitting only those owning or renting surrounding properties a key, while others welcome applications from residents in other parts of the City of Edinburgh. [4] Some gardens are regularly opened to the public, such as St Andrew Square, while others are only opened to the public on Doors Open Days or not at all. [5]
Each garden has a different management and ownership structure. Ownership is often by private shareholders or a joint ownership by the local residents. [6] For example, East Queen Street Gardens are owned by shareholders who have explicitly bought a share in the land, and keys are rented to those who apply successfully for access, as a way of bringing in income to the garden. The gardens are then usually managed by Commissioners – around eight for each garden. The Commissioners are elected by the owners, and have responsibility for sourcing gardeners, and ensuring the gardens are well maintained. A Clerk of the gardens usually handles membership applications and entitlement. The Clerk will be a member of a local solicitors firm, with their contact details often on plaques on the gates to the gardens. [7]
Some of the gardens, such as Bellvue Crescent Gardens and Gayfield Square Gardens, are now owned and managed by City of Edinburgh Council. [8] [9]
William Henry PlayfairFRSE was a prominent Scottish architect in the 19th century who designed the Eastern, or Third, New Town and many of Edinburgh's neoclassical landmarks.
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is a scientific centre for the study of plants, their diversity and conservation, as well as a popular tourist attraction. Founded in 1670 as a physic garden to grow medicinal plants, today it occupies four sites across Scotland—Edinburgh, Dawyck, Logan and Benmore—each with its own specialist collection. The RBGE's living collection consists of more than 13,302 plant species, whilst the herbarium contains in excess of 3 million preserved specimens.
James Craig was a Scottish architect who worked mostly in lowlands of the country and especially his native city of Edinburgh. He is remembered primarily for his layout of the first Edinburgh New Town.
The New Town is a central area of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. It was built in stages between 1767 and around 1850, and retains much of its original neo-classical and Georgian period architecture. Its best known street is Princes Street, facing Edinburgh Castle and the Old Town across the geological depression of the former Nor Loch. Together with the West End, the New Town was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site alongside the Old Town in 1995. The area is also famed for the New Town Gardens, a heritage designation since March 2001.
Charlotte Square is a garden square in Edinburgh, Scotland, part of the New Town, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The square is located at the west end of George Street and was intended to mirror St. Andrew Square in the east. The gardens, one of the collection of New Town Gardens, are private and not publicly accessible.
Stockbridge is a district of Edinburgh, located north of the city centre, bounded by the New Town and by Comely Bank. The name is Scots stock brig from Anglic stocc brycg, meaning a timber bridge. Originally a small outlying village, it was incorporated into the City of Edinburgh in the 19th century. The current "Stock Bridge", built in 1801, is a stone structure spanning the Water of Leith. The painter Henry Raeburn (1756–1823) owned two adjoining estates, Deanhaugh and St Bernard's, which he developed with the assistance of the architect James Milne. Milne was also responsible for the fine St Bernard's Church (1823) in Saxe Coburg Street. Ann Street, designed by Raeburn and named after his wife, is a rare early example of a New Town street with private front gardens.
Broughton is an ancient feudal barony, today an area of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Canonmills is a district of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. It lies to the south east of the Royal Botanic Garden at Inverleith, east of Stockbridge and west of Bellevue, in a low hollow north of Edinburgh's New Town. The area was formerly a loch which was drained in three phases in the 18th and 19th centuries, disappearing finally in 1865.
Park Crescent is at the north end of Portland Place and south of Marylebone Road in London. The crescent consists of elegant stuccoed terraced houses by the architect John Nash, which form a semicircle. The crescent is part of Nash's and wider town-planning visions of Roman-inspired imperial West End approaches to Regent's Park. It was originally conceived as a circus (circle) to be named Regent's Circus but instead Park Square was built to the north. The only buildings on the Regent's Park side of the square are small garden buildings, enabling higher floors of the Park Crescent buildings to have a longer, green northern view.
The West End is an affluent district of Edinburgh, Scotland, which along with the rest of the New Town and Old Town forms central Edinburgh, and Edinburgh's UNESCO World Heritage Site. The area boasts several of the city's hotels, restaurants, independent shops, offices and arts venues, including the Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh International Conference Centre and the Caledonian Hotel. The area also hosts art festivals and crafts fairs.
Park Crescent is a mid-19th-century residential development in the Round Hill area of Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. The horseshoe-shaped, three-part terrace of 48 houses was designed and built by one of Brighton's most important architects, Amon Henry Wilds; by the time work started in 1849 he had 35 years' experience in the town. Wilds used the Italianate style rather than his more common Regency motifs. Three houses were replaced after the Second World War because of bomb damage, and another was the scene of one of Brighton's notorious "trunk murders" of the 1930s. The three parts of the terrace, which encircle a private garden formerly a pleasure ground and cricket pitch, have been listed at Grade II* by English Heritage for their architectural and historical importance.
The Georgian House is an 18th-century townhouse situated at No. 7 Charlotte Square in the heart of the historic New Town of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland. It has been restored and furnished by the National Trust for Scotland, and is operated as a popular tourist attraction, with over 40,000 visitors annually.
John Chesser (1819-1892) was a nineteenth-century Scottish architect largely based in Edinburgh. He was described as "the prime exponent of terrace design at the time". A very high number of his works are now category A listed buildings, evidencing the quality of his work, particularly in the West End of Edinburgh.
Thomas Brown was a Scottish architect in the early 19th century based in Edinburgh. He is best known for St. Mary's Church, Bellevue, Edinburgh, usually known as Bellevue Church.
The Regent, Royal and Carlton Terrace Gardens are private communal gardens in the New Town area of Edinburgh, EH7. They lie over a 4.8-hectare (12-acre) site on the east side of Calton Hill. The gardens have been listed on the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes as part of the New Town gardens heritage designation since March 2001. The gardens form some of the collection of New Town Gardens.
Queen Street is the northernmost east-west street in Edinburgh's First New Town. It begins in the east, at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It links York Place with the Moray Estate.
William Allan of Glen JP (1788–1868) was a 19th-century Scottish merchant who served as Lord Provost of Edinburgh from 1829 to 1831.
Bellevue is a district of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. It lies to the south east of Canonmills, west of Leith Walk and south of Leith, incorporating the easternmost extent of Edinburgh's New Town UNESCO heritage site. The area was formerly open fields which became the second and penultimate location of the Royal Botanic Garden in 1763 .