The lower portion of the High Street, including _the Netherbow_, was,
till a recent time, remarkable for the antiquity of the greater number
of the buildings, insomuch that no equal portion of the city was more
distinctly a memorial of the general appearance of the whole as it was
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the north side of the
High Street, immediately adjacent to the Netherbow, there was a nest
of tall wooden-fronted houses of one character, and the age of which
generally might be guessed from the date existing upon one—1562. This
formed a perfect example of the _High Gait_ as it appeared to Queen
Mary, excepting that the open booths below had been converted into
close shops. The _fore-stairs_—that is, outside stairs ascending to
the _first floor_ (technically so called), from which the women of
Edinburgh reviled the hapless queen as she rode along the street after
her surrender at Carberry—were unchanged in this little district.
The popular story regarding houses of this kind is that they took their
origin in an inconvenience which was felt in having the Boroughmoor
covered with wood, as it proved from that circumstance a harbour for
robbers. To banish the robbers, it was necessary to extirpate the wood.
To get this done, the magistrates granted leave to the citizens to
project their house-fronts seven feet into the street, provided they
should execute the work with timber cut from the Boroughmoor. Robert
Fergusson follows up this story in a burlesque poem by relating how,
consequently,
‘Edina’s mansions with lignarian art
Were piled and fronted. Like an ark she seemed
To lie on mountain’s top, with shapes replete,
Clean and unclean——
To Jove the Dryads prayed, nor prayed in vain,
For vengeance on her sons. At midnight drear
Black showers descend, and teeming myriads rise
Of bugs abhorrent’——
The only authentic information to be obtained on the point is presented
by Maitland, when he tells us that the clearing of the Boroughmoor
of timber took place in consequence of a charter from James IV.
in 1508. He says nothing of robbers, but attributes the permission
granted by the magistrates for the making of wooden projections merely
to their desire of getting sale for their timber. After all, I am
inclined to trace this fashion to taste. The wooden fronts appear to
have originated in open galleries—an arrangement often spoken of
in early writings. These, being closed up or formed into a range of
windows, would produce the wooden-fronted house. It is remarkable
that the wooden fronts do not in many instances bear the appearance
of afterthoughts, as the stone structure within often shows such
an arrangement of the fore wall as seems designed to connect the
projecting part with the chambers within, or to give these chambers
as much as possible of the borrowed light. At the same time, it
is somewhat puzzling to find, in the closes below the buildings,
gateways with hooks for hinges seven feet or so from the present
street-front—an arrangement which does not appear necessary on the
supposition that the houses were built designedly with a stone interior
and a wooden projection.
In the Netherbow the street receives a contraction from the advance of
the houses on the north side, thus closing a species of parallelogram,
of which the Luckenbooths formed the upper extremity—the market-place
of our ancient city. The uppermost of the prominent houses—having of
course two fronts meeting in a right angle, one fronting to the line
of street, the other looking up the High Street—is pointed to by
tradition as the residence or manse of John Knox during his incumbency
as minister of Edinburgh, from 1560 till (with few interruptions) his
death in 1572. It is a picturesque building of three above-ground
floors, constructed of substantial ashlar masonry, but on a somewhat
small scale, and terminating in curious gables and masses of chimneys.
A narrow door, right in the angle, gives access to a small room,
lighted by one long window presented to the westward, and apparently
the _hall_ of the mansion in former times. Over the window and door is
this legend, in an unusually old kind of lettering: