Spurtle ventured out of our comfort zone this afternoon to visit the seedier side of Calton, in particular this splendidly malagrugrous cul-de-sac: St Ninian’s Row.
It looks like the sort of place tourists should be taken to hand over their spare £20 notes, and/or the ideal spot to find a dead body. Today, though, it was the site of nothing more unpleasant than inch-thick pigeon guano.
The street has a very long history. The area associated with it was originally much larger, but was mostly obliterated to make way for Waterloo Place and a railway goods yard at Waverley.
A lot earlier (in 1554 if not before), there was a chapel here dedicated to St Ninian, and that building survived as a house into the 18th century before being demolished to make way for the Regent Arch’s western abutment. The chapel’s font eventually ended up as an ornarnament in Sir Walter Scott’s back-green at Abbotsford.
In a map of 1647 (the Edinodunensis Tabulam of James Gordon Rothiemay), the thoroughfare also appears as the platea mendicorum (marked 6), otherwise known as Beggars’ Raw.
