Old Assembly Rooms, West Bow

Category

Library Item

Item no

776

Title

Old Assembly Rooms, West Bow

Description

People walk along the street outside the Old Assembly Rooms, West Bow, Edinburgh. A woman sits on a step outside a building and above her there is a street lamp on the wall. Washing dries from a window high up on a gable end and chimneys smoke on the rooftops.

Artist / maker

Skene, James

Date

1817

Size

23 x 16 cm.

Type

Wash drawing

Location

Edinburgh and Scottish Collection

James Skene's watercolour drawing is an early 19th century snapshot of the old West Bow, the narrow cobbled street which historically connected the Lawnmarket, towards the top of the High Street, with the Grassmarket and western approaches to the old town of Edinburgh. In the 17th and 18th century, the Grassmarket was the site of public executions. Residents of the West Bow, who lived between the between the old Tollbooth and the Grassmarket, were ideally placed to witness the procession of the condemned to the gallows. Sir Walter Scott, drawing on the collective memory of an earlier generation, paints an extraordinarily vivid picture:

"There was not a window in all the lofty tenements around it, or in the steep and crooked street called the Bow, by which the fatal procession was to descend from the High Street, that was not absolutely filled with spectators. The uncommon height and antiquity of these houses, some of which were formerly the property of the Knights Templars, and the Knights of St John, and still exhibit on their fronts and gables the iron cross of these orders, gave additional effect to a scene it itself so striking. The area of the Grassmarket resembled a huge dark sea of human heads, in the centre of which arose the fatal tree, tall, black and ominous&"(1)

In 1710, Edinburgh's first assembly rooms were opened in the West Bow. Space was extremely limited. Robert Chambers describes a single wainscoted room with a carved oak ceiling" with a small side room where the musicians retired to "roisin their bows during the intervals of the performance"(2). In 1723, the Assembly Rooms relocated to the High Street. James Skene mentions "the dreaded mansion of Major Weir the Warlock"(3) positioned immediately opposite the Assembly Rooms. Weir was sentenced to death for witchcraft in 1670, during a period of intense religious conflict. His walking stick apparently had supernatural powers (4). Weir's house, for many years after, was reputed to be haunted.

Skene describes the structure of the West Bow as so crowded and confused "that it bid defiance to any attempt or improvement or change, short of complete overthrow and memorial". However, by the 1830s, , just such an overthrow took place as Cockburn Street and George IV Bridge were constructed and major redevelopment work took place. "The present state of the Bow", writes Skene" is like that of a city after having sustained a leaving siege, and been lacked and laid prostrate. A few half deserted fragments remain only on one side, with their blackened bones laid bare and rafters hanging loose and the long hidden interiors of chambers and passages exposed to light".(5)

(1) Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian, 1830, The World's Classics 1982, 40
(2) Chambers Robert, Traditions of Edinburgh, Edinburgh and London, reprint 1955, 43
(3) Skene, James, Reekiana, 1836, 162
(4) Stevenson, RL, Picturesque Notes of Edinburgh, Seely and Co, London 1903, 46
(5) Skene, Reekiana, 162

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Homes > Residential buildings > Tenements

Places > Edinburgh areas > Old Town

Places > Edinburgh areas > Royal Mile

Places > Scotland > Edinburgh

Sport and leisure > Culture > Assembly rooms

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