Calton Hill - Buildings and Structures

Buildings and Structures

The Old Calton Burial Ground was the first substantial development on Calton Hill and lies on the south-western side of the hill. The philosopher David Hume is buried there. His tomb is engraved only with the year of his birth (1711) and death (1776), on the "simple Roman tomb" (a relatively large monument) which he prescribed. The Political Martyrs' Monument is also in the burial ground. This is in memory of five campaigners for political reform and universal suffrage who were convicted of sedition and sent in 1793 to Botany Bay, Australia.

On the West side of Calton Hill is the street named Calton Hill. Agnes Maclehose, better known as Robert Burns' Clarinda, lived at number 14 and died there in 1841. Burns, Scotland's national poet, sent Clarinda many verses over several years in unsuccessful (it is believed) attempts to seduce this beautiful married lady.

Calton Hill was the location of the notorious Calton Jail, a complex comprising a Debtors' Prison, the Bridewell (1791-96) by Robert Adam (later replaced) and a Felons' Prison of 1815-17 by Archibald Elliot. The jails were replaced by Saughton Prison and demolished in 1930 providing a site for St. Andrew's House, home to Scotland's senior civil servants. The sole surviving building is the castellated and turreted Governors House by Elliot. The lower curtain walls of the prison are still visible on the south side of St. Andrew's House, above Calton Road.

The eastern end of the ornate Regent Bridge is built into the side of the hill, crossing a deep gorge (at the bottom of which the opening scene from Trainspotting was shot) to connect the hill with Princes Street, now Edinburgh's main shopping street. The engineer in charge of building Regent Bridge in 1815 was Robert Stevenson, grandfather of the author Robert Louis Stevenson.

The renowned Scottish architect William Henry Playfair was responsible for the elegant thoroughfare that encircles the hill on three sides. Comprising Royal Terrace, Carlton Terrace and Regent Terrace, the largest of the townhouses can be found on Royal Terrace. Playfair's plan is dated 1819 and the first house was built at what is now 40 Royal Terrace. The gardens that cover over one half of the summit of the hill are privately administered by the local Residents Association.

Most of the properties on the terraces are occupied as houses but on Royal Terrace there is a number of hotels by far the largest being the Royal Terrace Hotel while on Regent Terrace is located the United States Consulate. Royal Terrace with its fine views over the Firth of Forth was known affectionately in the 19th-century as Whisky Row. This is said to be a reference to the amount of Spirit merchants, who bought the new properties, and for their supposed abilities to see their ships return from trading trips. Another explanation is that it was so named because of the large number of wine merchants who used to live there. Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême (the elder son of Charles X of France, last of the Bourbon kings) and his wife Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, (the daughter of Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette), moved into what is now 22 (then 21) Regent Terrace in 1830. Caroline Ferdinande Louise the Duchesse de Berri, sister in law of the Duc d'Angoulême, also lived at what is now 12 (then 11) Regent Terrace at that time. Her young son, Henri, the Comte de Chambord, is said to have wept bitterly when his family left for Austria in 1932 as he had become very attached to Scotland. The painter Francis Cadell one of the Scottish Colourists lived in 30 Regent Terrace from 1930-1935. The Western end of Regent Terrace was closed in 2001 to traffic because of security concerns about the United States Consulate. The City of Edinburgh Council proposed closing the Royal Terrace/Blenheim Place entrance to the Calton Hill Terraces in 2010 because of the Edinburgh Trams Project.

Playfair was responsible for many of the monumental structures on the summit of the hill most notably the Scottish National Monument. This monument was intended to be another Parthenon and to commemorate Scottish Soldiers killed in the Napoleonic wars. Construction started in 1826 but work was stopped in 1829 when the building was only partially built due to lack of money. It has never been completed. For many years this failure to complete led to its being nicknamed "Scotland's Disgrace" but this name has waned given the time elapsed since the Napoleonic Wars and it is now accepted for what it is.