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Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh, by the Author of 'traditions of Edinburgh' [to Which It Forms a Suppl. Half Title Reads Reekiana].
Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh by the Author of 'traditions of Edinburgh' - to Which It Forms a Suppl. Half Title Reads Reekiana Author:Robert Chambers General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1833 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: HOUSE OF DB WEBSTER, An eminent divine of the evangelical party, who died in 1784, and of whom many popular anecdotes are related. In 1832, the house was used as a cholera hospital. PART OF THE FIRST WALL OF EDINBURGH, Built in 1450, and which included only the High Street -- running in a line between that street and the Cowgate, which was then a suburb. This fragment of old wall was demolished in 1829, to make way for the western approach to the High Street, under the Improvements Act. The wall in question crossed the West Bow at the first turn from the top, where there was a gate, visible in De Witt's map, 1648, and of which one of the hooks for supporting a hinge is still to be seen in the front of an adjacent house. This gate, for some reason not easily to be understood, appears to have been kept up long after another wall had, in 1513, been extended in a wider circuit around thecity. It used to be the scene of certain ceremonials, at the entry of our sovereigns into Edinburgh ; and it is evident, from the records of the Society of High Constables, that it existed, and was regularly closed, in the year 1725. From this crook of the Bow, the wall stretched directly eastwards, at about an equal distance from the High Street and Cowgate. In 1832, when the workmen were digging for the foundations of a new Lock-up-house, in connexion with the Parliament House, a fragment of the wall, about fifty feet long, and twenty feet in height, was discovered in a line parallel to the south end of that building, and about ten feet from the windows of the manuscript room of the Advocates' Library, being, in fact...« less