As Edinburgh has grown organically over the years many small ancient hamlets and villages have become part of the city. Thankfully in many cases, a bit of their original character has been preserved and we can still imagine the original settlement.
Most notable of all is perhaps the royal burgh of Canongate. From the 12th century onwards, the area around the bottom half of the Royal Mile was an independent burgh. It had its own council, burgesses and trade guilds. It took until 1856 before it was formally fully integrated as part of Edinburgh. The Canongate Tolbooth shown below (built in 1591) is an impressive reminder of this once powerful burgh.
A well known ‘village’ within Edinburgh today is of course the Dean Village. Renowned as the home of flour mills on the Water of Leith for hundreds of years, the village has now become a much photographed and fashionable part of the city. Some of the former mill buildings and housing for mill workers have been repurposed as can be seen in this photo.
Gary Campbell-Hall from Edinburgh, UK, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
On the Firth of Forth, there is still clear evidence of the ancient fishing villages of Wardie and Newhaven. The ‘New’ in Newhaven was thus named in 1504 by James IV who needed a harbour suitable for his navy. And on the other side of the city, Swanston Village was beautifully restored in post-war years using traditional materials. It is well worth a visit. Robert Louis Stevenson spent many holidays in the village during his youth.
Swanston cottages by kim traynor, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Even when all vestiges of the original settlement has gone,the history can live on in the names of the streets and districts. Little France, where the Royal Infirmary stands today, was the district where French courtiers lived close to Craigmillar Castle in the time of Mary Queen of Scots. The suburb of Burdiehouse was a corruption of the name Bordeaux House which can be seen on 18th century maps. There is some doubt however about the origins of this name.
Edinburgh’s seaside village is of course Portobello. The successful siege of Porto Bello in Central America by Admiral Edward Vernon of the Royal Navy was a notable victory for the nascent British Empire in 1739. George Hamilton, one of the sailors from that victory returned home and built a small home on the coast which he called Portobello Hut in 1742. It was not long before other houses grew up around it. The name can be seen on Laurie’s map of 1763. It officially became part of Edinburgh in 1896.
Picardy Place which runs into Queen Street celebrates the home of a group of French cambric weavers who were brought to Scotland to improve the quality of Scotland’s linen exports in the early 18th century. The village of ‘Pickardy’ appears on a Cooper map of Edinburgh and Leith dated 1759.
Unlike Canongate, the Old Tolbooth of Edinburgh was demolished in 1817. However the location was marked by a mosaic in the shape of a heart in the street cobbles, known as the Heart of Midlothian. This somewhat romantic name gave rise to one of Sir Walter Scott’s major novels in 1818 and of course the football team of the same name in 1874.
Many have written about this aspect of Edinburgh’s past. If you’d like to learn more then I’d refer you to the 2 volumes of ‘Villages of Edinburgh’ by Malcolm Cant. The story of Canongate is excellently told by E.Patricia Dennison in her ‘Holyrood and Canongate’ book first published by Birlinn in 2005. Also you can check out the ‘Edinburgh Suburbs’ section of https://www.allaboutedinburgh.co.uk/