The New Town

St Andrew Square

Little of the original character of the first square to be built in Craig's New Town remains, although the houses along the north side give a rough idea of what it all would have looked like. The rest of the square has been largely swallowed up in grandiose financial institutions. However, the exterior of the elegant Palladian country house which is now the Royal Bank of Scotland's headquarters would still just about be recognisable to its 18th-century owner, Sir Laurence Dundas, Commissary-General in the British Army. In 1774 he pipped the City council to the post by buying this site before they could build St Andrew's Church here (forcing the church to be built on George Street, see below). Inside, the building has been much altered, but it's worth going in to see the starry 19th-century dome in the telling room. The reckless Sir Laurence later lost the house one night in a bet, but, rather than move out, built his creditor another house in Drummond Place.

The 150ft column in the middle of the square dominates its surroundings as surely as the man on top held the reins of power in late 18th-century Scotland. This was Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville, dubbed 'Harry IX, uncrowned King of Scotland' and described by Cockburn as 'the absolute dictator of Scotland'. He was Prime Minister William Pitt's right-hand man, keeping rigorous control over the voting of peers into Westminster, and wielding the kind of power that was only finally done away with by the 19th-century reform acts. The column, modelled on Trajan's in Rome, was put up in 1823, some two decades before Nelson's in London.

The six elongated figures on top of the Bank of Scotland, next door to its rival, represent Navigation, Commerce, Manufacture, Art, Science and Agriculture, the interests at the time of the British Linen Bank, who commissioned the building in 1846. Heading clockwise round the square, past another antique tiled bar called Tiles, you will find a plaque on the wall at No.21, in South St David Street, which marks the place where David Hume's new house once stood. One of the first to move into the New Town, the mild-mannered philosopher is supposed to have taken it in good part when the daughter of a judge graffitied his wall with 'St David'. He replied that many a worse man had been canonised, and the name has stuck for the street. It's ironic that this house was later where the first meetings of the Bible Society of Scotland were held.

Walk around St Andrew Square and continue west down George Street.

George Street

As you walk you will be keeping pace more or less with the order of the first New Town's development: the first cross-street, Hanover Street, was begun in 1784; the second, Frederick Street, in 1786; and the third, Castle Street, six Years later.

One of the joys of George Street is the changing panorama. Like a beacon at the far end of the street you can see the green dome of West Register House in Charlotte Square, which you will see up close near the end of this walk (see p. 146). Looking south, Hanover Street presents the extraordinary picture of the Royal Scottish Academy backed up by the Assembly Hall's twin towers and the spire of the Highland Tolbooth Kirk. To the north, the New Town slopes down to the Firth of Forth and the hills of Fife beyond, a view enhanced at Frederick Street by Playfair's church of St Stephen.