3-011-482 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Edinburgh: old houses in High-street, 1864. 'Passing from the castle, we are on the long, dirty, and noisy street, which, under the successive names of the Lawn-market, High-street, and Canongate, leads down to Holyrood Palace. This was, at no very distant period, the main thoroughfare of Edinburgh. Here were congregated the chief nobility and the rank and fashion of Scotland. Still, on the outsides of some of the miserable and dilapidated mansions, are to be seen the armorial bearings of the proud Earls who ruled like Kings in days of yore. What a change has time wrought! Groups of ragged and barefooted men, women, and children lounge upon the stone staircases which once formed the common approach to the flats upon which the best in the land dwelt, or hang idle and woe-begone from the paneless windows, where once grace and beauty watched the pageantry of Kings and nobles...Amongst the most picturesque of the houses at this part of the town is that of which we give an Engraving. It is situated at the comer of the West Bow, and is a fair type of what the old mansions of Edinburgh were in former times'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.