Old Town

That's a good question, actually.

I believe Stirling Old Town Jail's got quite a reputation.

Uh, I've been to the jail a few times, never on a sort of investigation side, but it, it's a great place to visit.

Yeah.

And when you think about this, you know, the sort of the new town down there when they built the new town.

And before that, you had people all living in the same, roughly living in the same buildings up here in the old town.

You had poor people in the bottom, the labourers, and you had the tradesmen in the middle and the professionals, kind of doctors, teachers, lawyers and all that.

And they took the professionals and moved them away down to the new town.

So they actually, what they were doing by doing that is they were building the first suburb, but they were also building the first ghetto, creating the first ghetto here in the old town.

And then they kind of took all or most of the inner city poverty and pushed it out to the housing schemes where people can't see it.

And there's always been that duality about Edinburgh.

It's not snowy, but it's misty and grey.

Their destination was the old town, for Miss Brodie had said they should see where history had been lived.

And their route had brought them to the Middle Meadow Walk.

So Sophie, let's continue across the meadows.

Let's see where history has been lived.

OK, Sophie, we've crossed the meadows and here's what happens in the prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

They approach the old town which none of the girls had properly seen before because none of their parents were so historically minded as to be moved to conduct their young into the reeking network of slums which the old town constituted in those years.

It was Sandy's first experience of a foreign country which intimates itself by its new smells and shapes and its new paw.

There is no better place for a stranger to get his bearings in Edinburgh than out on the valley-spanning boulevard they call the Mound.

He then has the old town to one side and the new town to the other and on opposite corners as if to maintain the balance, the castle and Calton Hill.

He also takes note of the several bridges that clamp the town together as it were.

And he may look down into the gardens before him and watch the children playing as far as the promenade covered Waverley Station.

John Knox's pulpit, the banners of the covenanters, the thumbkins, the aged confession and the guillotine maiden that rewarded it, the pistols Robert Burns used as an excess man and the sea chest and coconut cup of Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe.

And there too is Bonnie Prince Charlie's blue ribbon of the garter and the ring Flora MacDonald gave him when they parted.

If historic paraphernalia is alluring however the scenes of its associations are much more so and our friend would doubtless hesitate no longer but turn to the old town and trudge up the steep way to the castle.

You take the high road and I'll take the low road and I'll go to Scotland afor ye.

the Flodden Wall.

They had to build up, and so they built what they called tenements, and this made the whole old town totally chaotic and totally built out, and people were literally living one on top of the other.

This was a huge issue and problem, overcrowding, the smell, the noise, the chaos.

There were lots of, like I said, narrow alleyways, which they called closes or wynds, I think-

[laughs] That means duck, there's poop and wee being thrown over balconies o- somewhere.

Yes.

The old town was a mix of both wealthy and poor people.

I mean, the wealthy didn't have anywhere else to go.

We always do the one in Leith at the weekends, which is good, full of good stories.

We do the one in the old town, which, you know, starts for the famous Royal Mile and goes down the way.

We do one in Portobello sometimes by the seaside and one in, you know, Trinity down at Warday Bay, which is, you know, pretty cool.

You know, there's a lot of old stories for there.

We arrived, uh, on Saturday.

Except it's super busy and vibrant and wonderful and exciting in what is called the Old Town of, of Edinburgh.

These are like wide cobbled streets lined with pubs and cafes and not just Scottish pubs, although they're very good ones with very good ales and haggis, which I'm not brave enough yet to try 'cause it just sounds by any description like it's completely gross.

Cooked in a sheep's stomach.