You
may not guess it from walking down this street, what with the Brutalist flats
of Linksview House dominating it, but Tolbooth Wynd is one of the oldest
streets in Leith and was once described as being one of the most picturesque in
the area. In the early thirteenth
century the first houses built in Leith were built upon the land that now
stands between Tolbooth Wynd and The Shore.
Tolbooth
Wynd takes its name from the fact that about half way down the street there
used to stand the Old Tolbooth, a building that served as a meeting chamber,
courthouse, a jail and occasionally, accommodation for soldiers stationed at
Leith. The Tolbooth was built in 1565
and was in use for nearly two hundred and fifty years, before falling into
disrepair. It was then proposed that it
should be demolished and a new court house and prison built in its place. There
was a campaign, led by Walter Scott, to preserve the façade of the building,
but this was ‘cavalierly dismissed’ by the Lord Provost and the building was demolished
in 1825. The new building only
functioned as a courthouse for a few years before being converted into shops
and offices.
The
Tolbooth housed many prisoners in its time, though not that many of note, as
most of the more infamous criminals ended up in the Tolbooth at Edinburgh. Probably the most distinguished prisoner who
had the misfortune to reside there was William Maitland of Lethington. He was the Secretary of State to Mary Queen
of Scots and was imprisoned in the Leith Tolbooth in 1573 by the Regent
Morton. Fearing he would face the
humiliation and cruelty of a public execution, he took a dose of poison and
died in his cell. It was said that his
corpse was left lying in his cell for so long that it was partially eaten by the
numerous rats that infested the building.
So, you can probably imagine that it was not the healthiest place to
serve out any time as a prisoner. On a
lighter note, another of those imprisoned within the Tolbooth was a rather
hapless thief. In 1763 a sailor arrived
in Leith on a ship from London and went for a few ales in one of the local
taverns. While there he boasted to his
new found companions that he had made some money while away and had a chest on
board the ship with over £200 in it.
This boast was overheard by a local ne'er-do-well who saw a way of
making some quick money. He disguised
himself as a porter and went to the ship where he told the crew that he had
been sent by the sailor to collect the chest.
The unsuspecting crew handed the chest over to him. However, the thief, being unused to ships,
slipped on the plank leading down to the dock and fell into the sea, along with
the chest. A host of people quickly
gathered around to rescue the poor man, including the owner of the chest, who
was shocked to see that it was his own chest that was fished out of the water
along with the would be thief. The thief, still dripping wet and half drowned,
was quickly marched along to the Tolbooth, and locked up in a cell.
At
the eastern end of Tolbooth Wynd there stood for many years a signal tower
looking out over the Forth. It was said
to be of a sturdy design, much like an old fort. It had
portholes at the top like those often designed for firing muskets out of, but
that were actually for the local merchants to look out from and watch as their
ships sailed off from, or returned to, the harbour.
Like
any old street, Tolbooth Wynd has a ghost story attached to it. Not to be outdone by other tales of headless
horsemen and the suchlike, it was said that on stormy nights at midnight, a
coach could be heard thundering down the street. Anyone brave enough to peek out through their
window as it passed would see a funereal looking coach tearing down along the
cobbled street, driven by a tall, gaunt man, dressed all in black and without a
head, and drawn by six black horses who were all also headless. Through the coach window, it was said you
could glimpse a mysterious woman sitting inside, her face covered by a black
veil.
Around
midnight, during a foggy and cold night a few years ago, I was making my way
back home from a local pub and walked up along Tolbooth Wynd. There I heard a terrible rumbling and screeching. On looking up and fully expecting to see the
dreaded ghostly coach approaching, I instead saw a demonic like figure on an
off road motorbike tearing down the road.
He wasn’t headless but rather had his head hidden in the depths of a
grey hoodie. With blue lights flashing
and sirens wailing like a screaming banshee, a ghostly police car was in hot pursuit
behind him. They were soon lost in the swirling
darkness of the night, like an apparition of old, and I continued my slightly
inebriated stumble home.
A
large part of Tolbooth Wynd was demolished and rebuilt in the 1880s. During the slum clearances in Leith during
the 1950s and 1960s much of it was again demolished and replaced with a housing
scheme and the Linksview House tower block.
In 2017 Linksview House became a listed building with Category A Status,
being seen as an important example of Brutalist architecture.
Today, in the not so cold light of day, I took a walk around Leith and through Tolbooth Wynd. In a gap in a crumbly, stone wall by the small park there, I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on my walk.
The
coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –
Latitude
55.974437
Longitude
-3.171031
what3words:
riches.moons.clear
I
used the following sources for information on Tolbooth Wynd –
Historical Notes Concerning Leith and its Antiquities,
Volume 1
By James Campbell Irons M.A.
1897
Cassell’s Old and New Edinburgh, Vol 3
By James Grant
1883
Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time, Vol 2
By Daniel Wilson
1891
Historic Environment Scotland
Iconic Leith flats
recognised at highest listing category
