A description of Tolbooth Wynd and adjoining Streets in the 1880’s
Immediately to the eastward of the Kirkgate, and opening off it lie three ancient thoroughfares –St Giles St, St Andrew St or The Deus Bras as it was named by the French garrison of Marshall Strozzi in 1560.
The first of these winds for nearly a thousand feet in length to its intersection on the westward by Kapples (Cables) wynd. Amid its new erections here at its eastern end, and bordering on Kemps Close-doomed to the improvement scheme of 1880-is a great Public School, an edifice with a frontage of nearly one hundred feet in length and seventy feet wide.
The custom of affixing divers legends to the lintels of their dwellings appertained quite as much to Leith as it did to Edinburgh and Wilson records that he found the earliest instance of it on an ancient tenement in Binnie’s Close, in Giles Street, accompanied by a large and finely cut shield charged with two coats of arms impaled, the date shown being 1594.with the aphorism “Blessit be God for all his gifts. In Vinegar Close he adds that there is an ancient building although modernised is adored with a large sculptured shield. It bears the name of Henry Smith and Agnes Gray and it has in the first Canon a Saltire with two sheaves of wheat; in chide a crescent and in base a ship; in the second the Lion rampant within the treasure; over all a beautiful scroll work with a closed helmet crested with a sheaf of wheat.. In Muckle’s Close, an adjacent Alley, is the legend “The Blessing of Godis Grit riches” with the date 1609 and the initials MS.
St Andrews St is above six hundred feet in length and is intersected by Riddle’s Close. In Smeaton’s Close a narrow alley adjoining legends are found dated 1688 “Feir the Lord” and the other “The feir of the lord is the beginning of all wisdome”. This part of Leith was anciently called St Leonard’s. There the street diverges into two alley’s one narrow and gloomy, which bears the title of Parliament Court and the other called the Sheephead Wynd in which remains a very ancient building. The ground floor is composed of arches of Norman design however the building bears the date 1579 with the initials DW and MW. However though small and dilapidated it was not of some importance it its time with ornamented string courses. Unfortunately it was removed in 1859.
Near here stood Gun stood what was called the Gun Stone House. According to the story an old peddler was dieing and was on his death bed. He said to his wife “when I die I won’t leave you anything” and said the same thing to his daughter, However as soon as these words were said a cannon ball came crashing through the ceiling and went through the floor exposing where the mean old peddler had left his money and for many years the cannonball could be seen at the top of the stairs.
Unfortunately these close’s and Wynds disappeared in the Leith Improvement of 1881 and with it disappeared a lot of Leith History.
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