Former name(s) | Wester Portsburgh |
---|---|
Length | 0.2 mi (0.32 km) |
Coordinates | 55°56′47″N3°12′00″W / 55.94639°N 3.20000°W |
west end | Main Point |
east end | Grassmarket |
The West Port is a street in Edinburgh's Old Town, just south of Edinburgh Castle. It runs from Main Point (the junction of Bread Street, Lauriston Street, East Fountainbridge and High Riggs) to the southwest corner of the Grassmarket.
The street takes its name from the westernmost of the "ports" or gates in the Flodden Wall. The gate stood at the Grassmarket and opened onto the suburb of Portsburgh until it was demolished in the 1780s. [1]
Wester Portsburgh, as the area around the West Port was formerly known, was the main street through the western part of the burgh of Portsburgh [2] - a burgh of barony from 1649 [3] to 1856. [4]
The name West Port originally referred only to the gate itself, but was used for the entire length of the street leading away from the gate in maps from around 1837 onwards. [5] Wester Portsburgh still appeared as the name of the street on maps as late as 1831. [6]
Portsburgh can also be seen as the name for the same street in a map from 1836. [7] However, this does not serve to distinguish it from the eastern part of Portsburgh (Easter Portsburgh), which was still part of the same burgh at that date, the two parts of Portsburgh having their own administrative systems and baillies. [8]
The Art Nouveau Salvation Army Women's Hostel at the corner of the Grassmarket, The Vennel [14] and the West Port was built in 1910 and is C Listed. [15] Edinburgh College of Art, purchased and used the Hostel, in addition to the next-door Portsburgh Church, entered via the Vennel. Planning permission was granted in October 2007 for the two buildings to be changed to serviced apartments. [16]
The name of Portsburgh Square [17] on the north side of West Port is a reminder of the area's former name.
Dominating the north side of the West Port at its junction with Lady Lawson Street is Argyle House, built in 1968 to designs by Michael Laird and Partners. [18] Long used as local and national government offices, it now houses CodeBase, the largest tech incubator in Scotland, University of Edinburgh offices, along with various other businesses.
Evolution House, the newest building of the Edinburgh College of Art stands on the south east corner of West Port and Lady Lawson Street. [19]
Westport 102 was constructed on the West Port side of the block between Lady Lawson Street and Lauriston Street [20] on the site of the old Post Office headquarters, which famously collapsed during demolition in 2007, leading to several roads being closed in the area for an extended period of time. [21]
The Royal Mile is a succession of streets forming the main thoroughfare of the Old Town of the city of Edinburgh in Scotland. The term was first used descriptively in W. M. Gilbert's Edinburgh in the Nineteenth Century (1901), describing the city "with its Castle and Palace and the royal mile between", and was further popularised as the title of a guidebook by R. T. Skinner published in 1920, "The Royal Mile (Edinburgh) Castle to Holyrood(house)".
Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) is one of eleven schools in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Tracing its history back to 1760, it provides higher education in art and design, architecture, history of art, and music disciplines for over three thousand students and is at the forefront of research and research-led teaching in the creative arts, humanities, and creative technologies. ECA comprises five subject areas: School of Art, Reid School of Music, School of Design, School of History of Art, and Edinburgh School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture (ESALA). ECA is mainly located in the Old Town of Edinburgh, overlooking the Grassmarket; the Lauriston Place campus is located in the University of Edinburgh's Central Area Campus, not far from George Square.
The Grassmarket is a historic market place, street and event space in the Old Town of Edinburgh, Scotland. In relation to the rest of the city it lies in a hollow, well below surrounding ground levels.
The Cowgate is a street in Edinburgh, Scotland, located about 550 yards (500 m) southeast of Edinburgh Castle, within the city's World Heritage Site. The street is part of the lower level of Edinburgh's Old Town, which lies below the elevated streets of South Bridge and George IV Bridge. It meets the Grassmarket at its west end and Holyrood Road to the east.
This article is a timeline of the history of Edinburgh, Scotland, up to the present day. It traces its rise from an early hill fort and later royal residence to the bustling city and capital of Scotland that it is today.
Tollcross is a major road junction to the south west of the city centre of Edinburgh, Scotland which takes its name from a local historical land area.
The Canongate is a street and associated district in central Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland. The street forms the main eastern length of the Royal Mile while the district is the main eastern section of Edinburgh's Old Town.
Linlithgow is a town in West Lothian, Scotland. It was historically West Lothian's county town, reflected in the county's historical name of Linlithgowshire. An ancient town, it lies in the Central Belt on a historic route between Edinburgh and Falkirk beside Linlithgow Loch. The town is situated approximately 20 miles (32 km) west of Edinburgh.
The Old Town is the name popularly given to the oldest part of Scotland's capital city of Edinburgh. The area has preserved much of its medieval street plan and many Reformation-era buildings. Together with the 18th/19th-century New Town, and West End, it forms part of a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Burgh Muir is the historic term for an extensive area of land lying to the south of Edinburgh city centre, upon which much of the southern part of the city now stands following its gradual spread and more especially its rapid expansion in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The name has been retained today in the partly anglicised form Boroughmuir for a much smaller district within Bruntsfield, vaguely defined by the presence of Boroughmuir High School, and, until 2010, Boroughmuirhead post office in its north-west corner.
A vennel is a passageway between the gables of two buildings which can in effect be a minor street in Scotland and the north east of England, particularly in the old centre of Durham.
Perth is a city and former royal burgh in central Scotland. There has been a settlement at Perth since prehistoric times. Finds in and around Perth show that it was occupied by the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who arrived in the area more than 8,000 years ago. Nearby Neolithic standing stones and circles followed the introduction of farming from about 4000 BC, and a remarkably well preserved Bronze Age log boat dated to around 1000 BC was found in the mudflats of the River Tay at Carpow to the east of Perth. Carpow was also the site of a Roman legionary fortress.
There have been several town walls around Edinburgh, Scotland, since the 12th century. Some form of wall probably existed from the foundation of the royal burgh in around 1125, though the first building is recorded in the mid-15th century, when the King's Wall was constructed. In the 16th century the more extensive Flodden Wall was erected, following the Scots' defeat at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. This was extended by the Telfer Wall in the early 17th century. The walls had a number of gates, known as ports, the most important being the Netherbow Port, which stood halfway down what is now the Royal Mile. This gave access from the Canongate which was, at that time, a separate burgh.
Argyll's Lodging is a 17th-century town-house in the Renaissance style, situated below Stirling Castle in Stirling, Scotland. It was a residence of the Earl of Stirling and later the Earls of Argyll. The Royal Commission regards it as “the most important surviving town-house of its period in Scotland”. At the end of the 20th century it became a museum.
Daniel Lizars (1754–1812) was an 18th-century Scottish engraver, map-maker and publisher. He was patriarch to the famous Lizars family. He is remembered for his views of Edinburgh.
The Collegiate Church of St Mary in the Fields was a pre-Reformation collegiate church in Edinburgh, Scotland. Likely founded in the 13th century and secularised at the Reformation, the church's site is now covered by Old College.
William Robertson (1805–1882) was a Scottish minister of the Church of Scotland and a primary promoter of the 19th century concept of ragged schools and urban missions. The Robertson Memorial Mission in Edinburgh's Grassmarket is named after him.