IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Bristo Place, EDINBURGH, EH1 1HA

An inscription on this late-Victorian tenement marks the site of the house where plans were hatched in the 1690s to found a Scottish colony on the Isthmus of Darien. The idea - the brainchild of William Paterson, the Scot who founded the Bank of England - was to kick-start a Scottish empire to emulate England's success in global trading. Town corporations and private individuals, from aristocrats to humble kirk-goers, invested in the scheme which foundered on bad planning and unfounded optimism (Panamanians had no wish to trade for powdered wigs and King James bibles), Spanish hostility and English indifference. King William instructed the English colonies nearby to refuse to aid to the Scots when they were attacked by the Spaniards. 'New Caledonia' had to be abandoned, leaving thousands of Scots bankrupt. The episode is seen as one of the main reasons why the impoverished Scottish nobility, bribed for their votes in the Scottish Parliament, agreed to the Union with England in 1707. Scotland's bard, Robert Burns, castigated them as "a parcel of rogues", claiming that the nation had been "bought and sold for English gold". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyj6c5VPLHQ Mr Arthur Lee mentioned some Scotch who had taken possession of a barren part of America, and wondered why they should choose it. Johnson: "Why, Sir, all barrenness is comparative. The Scotch would not know it to be barren." -- James Boswell, Life of Johnson

A Victorian tenement built at the point where the Telfer Wall running west to east along the High Riggs (between Lauriston and this point) turned northwards at a corner bastion to meet the Bristo Port (at the northern end of what is now Bristo Place). Most of the wall in this area was removed in 1762. Image

Sadly, the Victorian builder of the tenement was not aware that the wall here was the Telfer Wall, built in the years 1628-36, and not the Flodden Wall built in phases after 1513. The latter ran along the south side of Greyfriars Kirkyard to meet the Bristo Port where there is now a street of that name behind the modern extension to the National Museum of Scotland. Image

Bristo Place is the remaining third of what was once Bristo Street, two-thirds of which vanished when the area was redeveloped. It leads to the main University buildings around Potterrow and George Square.

Herbalist, Bristo Place.

Another car parked in the "bike lane" with a view of University of Edinburgh buildings.

A 'Residential Care Home For Men And Women', run by the Jericho Benedictine Society on the corner of Lothian Street and Bristo Place. It was formerly the St Francis Of Assisi Roman Catholic Church, then St Patrick's Roman Catholic Chapel And School. Update 2016: The building was sold recently to a private buyer and is no longer used as a care home.

The new Hotel du Vin incorporates a remnant of the Victorian Charity Poorhouse. It was in an earlier building on this spot that the 18thC poet Robert Fergusson was confined and died at an early age. The Poorhouse moved to new buildings at Craiglockhart which opened in 1870. Image

Update on the development at Bristo Place, photographed 5 years earlier as a building site Image