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Edinburgh, 194 Canongate

Tenement (17th Century)

Site Name Edinburgh, 194 Canongate

Classification Tenement (17th Century)

Alternative Name(s) James Souter

Canmore ID 132682

Site Number NT27SE 2805

NGR NT 26297 73725

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/132682

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Administrative Areas

  • Council Edinburgh, City Of
  • Parish Edinburgh (Edinburgh, City Of)
  • Former Region Lothian
  • Former District City Of Edinburgh
  • Former County Midlothian

Activities

Publication Account (1951)

110. 194-198 Canongate and Old Playhouse Close.

In the 17th century this tenement, through the centre of which runs the entry to Old Playhouse Close, must have been one of the most dignified buildings in the burgh, and if relieved of its modern accretions it would even to-day possess a certain quiet distinction. Its front of three storeys and an attic, which faces the Canongate is unusually well proportioned, but on the ground floor modern shops have been intruded on each side of the archway through which the Close is entered. The first floor has five windows, with modern architraves and cornices, rising from a plain sill-course which maybe modern also. The second floor has five semi-dormers with plain, triangular pediments, the finials of which, respectively in the form of a cinquefoil, a rose, a thistle, a fleur-de-lys and a star, all appear to have been renewed. The attic is lit by five storm-windows of wood, rising within the slated roof which still abuts on crow-steps on the E. At the back projects the semi-circular stair-tower from which the upper floors were reached. The stair entrance is moulded, and the lintel bears a central, scrolled cartouche between two sets of initials, A I and I S, possibly for Alexander Inglis and Isobel Smyth, who were married in 1624. The cartouche is inscribed IEHOVA DEDIT / HOSPITIUM TERRIS CAELICA REGNA DAB IT / ANNO… ("Jehovah gave a dwelling-place on earth and will give a kingdom in heaven. In the year ... "), the date being erased. The wall-head on either side of the stair-tower supports a semi-dormer. The W. dormer lacks its pediment and the fleur-de-lys finial of the other one has been renewed. The roof above is partly slated and partly pantiled.

A square wing of two storeys and an attic, dormered to E. and W., extends along the W. side of the Close. The general similarity of its masonry to that of the front building shows that the two are contemporary, and suggests that the former was originally, as now,part of the latter. The two lowest storeys of both wing and front building have been modernised, but the lowest room of the wing, at present a storeroom, was formerly a living-room of some distinction. On the second floor the staircase gave access to a lobby from which four rooms opened. The two front rooms have early 18th-century panelling and the E. one of them has a small closet at its N.E. corner.

A second building, No. 2 Playhouse Close, oblong on plan and three storeys in height, extends S. and in alinement with the wing described above. Towards the Close it has an angular projection containing the staircase, and to make room for the stair entrance the lower part of the adjoining side-wall is recessed below an encorbellment. Although the entrance doorway is moulded like that of the front building, the fabric as a whole seems to be rather later in date. There is nothing of interest within.

Playhouse Close takes its name from the theatre that was established here in 1747 but has long since been removed. The Canongate was at one time a centre of entertainments.* Thus in 1659 Nicoll's Diary speaks of “ane heigh great beast, callit ane Drummodary, quhilk being keip it clos in the Cannongate, nane haid a sight of it without thriepence the persone, quhilk producit much gayne to the keipar . . . Thair wes brocht in with it ane liytill baboun, faced like into a naip” (an ape); while the tennis-court that stood behind the buildings of Abbey Strand was commonly used for theatrical displays.

RCAHMS 1951

*Edinburgh too had its simple pleasures. On 10th July 1598 a tight-rope walker performed on a rope fastened between the weather-cock of St. Giles' Church and a stair-tower in a neighbouring close, receiving twenty pounds Scots from the Crown as a gratuity. (The Diary of Robert Birrel, p. 47, in Fragments of Scottish History, 1798).

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