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Ross McDowell / Tartan Compass
Below the High Street ridge, the Grassmarket and Cowgate show another Edinburgh: markets, inns, craft, punishment and movement compressed into the lower streets of the Old Town.
The Grassmarket and Cowgate can be quite hidden to visitors even though they run right alongside the better-known Old Town. What interests me is how quickly Edinburgh changes when you drop below the Royal Mile. Markets, religion, punishment and migration sit in streets crossed by later bridges and routes. Then it changes again at night, when students, sport, music and nightlife bring a completely different energy.
The Grassmarket was already a secondary market place by around 1500 and continued to handle agricultural produce for centuries. It was also a place of public execution, including the killing of Covenanters during the religious conflicts of the seventeenth century. The Cowgate adds a different layer. Surviving buildings such as the Magdalene Chapel and former Tailors' Hall preserve evidence of religion, trade, craft and organised urban life below the High Street. Later bridges and improvement streets cut across that older geography. South Bridge, Victoria Street and other changes altered movement through the Old Town without erasing the slopes and levels underneath.
From the Cowgate, parts of the city that feel level on the Royal Mile suddenly appear high above. The vertical relationship between streets is one of the clearest ways to understand the Old Town. In the Grassmarket, the Castle dominates the view while the ground below it carries a very different history of trade, accommodation, gathering and punishment. Older buildings now sit beside later bridges and improvement streets, leaving several phases of Edinburgh visible at once.
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