Reinventing Scotland's Grassmarket
Edinburgh's Grassmarket Dumps its Gallows and Begins Recycling
Scotland's Grassmarket is host to pubs, shops and soon to be home to an underground recycling facility. Once a place that hanged its criminals, this makes a nice change.
Built upon centuries of bloody history and a medieval marketplace, Edinburgh, Scotland's Grassmarket is undergoing major restorations that are set to be completed Autumn 2008. A far cry from the gallows that once stood here, the area remains a popular place for a night out whether you fancy a pint or traditional Scottish live music.
At present, the Grassmarket has all but been turned upside down with construction and restoration works that began towards the end of 2007. Aiming to give more room to pedestrians, footpaths are being widened and redone—and not the poured-out thick grey concrete found in North America—slabs and stones are being laid as intricately as if it was the 16th century.
The project, set to come to an end just after the famous Edinburgh Festival, will also see a “sustainable 100-year plan for trees in the Grassmarket,” according to a pamphlet circulated by city council. Hopefully the new trees will fare a little better than the ones that already live in the main strip, as they look a little sickly and tend to lean to one side.
The council seems to really be seeing green lately, as an underground recycling centre is also in the works. Bins will be dug underground and shoots will be placed at street level. This is surely very welcomed by Grassmarket residents who may be seen carrying their empty plastics and tins to the university campus’ recycling bins!
But the sounds of jackhammers and diggers do not account for half of the din that can be heard from underneath the castle. It’s the night time noise that can really be heard.
The Grassmarket is now perhaps known best for its nightlife. Pubs line the street. Black Bull, Maggie Dickinson’s and The Last Drop, for example. People come from all over the world to grab a whisky at The White Horse Inn, where Scottish bard Robbie Burns stayed on his last visit to the city in 1791. The bar, which claims to be the oldest in the city offers live music every night. Like many other places in the city, young women come to the area in feather boas and sparkly cowboy hats as it seems to be a particularly hot spot for bachleorette parties "hen nights" in the UK.
This popular section of the Old Town, was not always the rowdy tourist draw it is today. According to the area’s website the Grassmarket was likely used as a market in the 14th century. “Originally the site of cattle fairs, various stables and yards were built around the market for the cattle to be fattened and butchered before taken to the meat market,” the website says.
The cattle were not the only type of animal to be slaughtered in or around the Grassmarket streets. Just outside The Last Drop remains a circular slab of concrete market with a red cross—the place where the gallows once stood. The square is one of the places ‘criminals’ (sometimes thieves, but sometimes Protestants) were hanged in the 1700s.
Edinburgh, often still called "Auld Reekie," has surely made big profits off the executions that happened here—and the witch hunts. A walk down the High Street (the Royal Mile) offers half a dozen options for a ghost tour. Whether you prefer to take a night time stroll in a graveyard or be led underground into a creepy close, the options are there—and so are the true stories of torture and death.
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