The West End is an affluent district of Edinburgh, Scotland, which along with the rest of the New Town and Old Town forms central Edinburgh, and Edinburgh's UNESCO World Heritage Site. The area boasts several of the city's hotels, restaurants, independent shops, offices and arts venues, including the Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh International Conference Centre and the Caledonian Hotel. The area also hosts art festivals and crafts fairs.
Built as a western expansion of the New Town, the northern part of the West End sits on the Water of Leith river and forms part of Edinburgh's UNESCO World Heritage Site. The West End is contiguous with the rest of the New Town and is accordingly included in the New Town Conservation Area. The conservation area contains many buildings of great architectural beauty, primarily long rows and crescents of Georgian terraced houses. The West End also incorporates many of the New Town Gardens, a heritage designation since 2001.
The district is one of Edinburgh's most affluent areas, and includes many of the most expensive streets in Scotland's capital. Many nations have their consulates in the West End. The Scottish Episcopal Church has its headquarters, Forbes House, in the district and the official residence of the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is also located here.
The West End district is immediately west of the rest of the New Town, and also the Old Town. It is bordered to the north by the Stockbridge, Dean Village, and Ravelston districts, Tollcross and Fountainbridge districts to the south, and West Coates, Haymarket and Murrayfield to the West.
History
In 1615 John Byres the city Treasurer built Easter Coates House to the west of the city. The house had a truly huge estate, stretching to St Cuthbert's Church.The Closes and Wynds of Edinburgh: The Old Edinburgh Club The house was originally a Laird's house, and as the city of Edinburgh grew, and John Byres became city Treasurer and Bailie, it became an early example of a Burgher's city mansion. The house is still standing as of the 21st century as the centre of the West End district.
Founding of the West End (Western New Town) For the history and development of the rest of New Town see: New Town, Edinburgh.
In 1806, Shandwick Place was developed as a western extension of New Town's Princes Street, to the south of the Easter Coates House estate, by John Cockburn Ross, of Shandwick in Easter Ross, who commissioned architect James Tait to come up with a plan for the west of New Town. It was eventually joined up with the newly built Maitland Street (started 1807), named after its developer and owner Sir Alexander Charles Maitland, 2nd baronet of Cliftonshall.
Around 1800, the Easter Coates House estate was bought by William Walker, an Advocate and the Gentleman Usher of the White Rod in the Estates of Parliament, who sought to develop the east section of the estate, as a western extension of the then newly built New Town. In 1808 a plan for the West End Village was devised by the architect Robert Brown. Property in the West of the city was desirable to the wealthy early on because the winds carried smog, dust and pollution eastward.
Under the Brown plan Melville Street would form the centrepiece of the new Georgian West End Village, extending directly from the western facing side of West Register House and Randolph Place. The street would be accessed to the south at Shandwick Place, from Coates Crescent by Walker Street, which would itself be intersected by William Street to create a Georgian grid layout, with both roads named after William Walker. Construction began in 1813 on Coates Crescent. Brown also developed Atholl Crescent which faces Coates Crescent.Buildings of Scotland: Edinburgh by Gifford McWilliam and Walker Melville Street was largely completed by the 1830s although the corner plots would remain unfinished until the 1860s. At the centre of Melville Street is a bronze statue of Robert Dundas, 2nd Viscount Melville standing on two large stone steps.
The William Walker estate abutted the estate of James Erskine, Lord Alva and the Erskine Trustees, with Stafford Street forming the junction between the two estates. The Erskine family estate was developed alongside the Walker estate, but using James Gillespie Graham as the architect, instead of Brown. Gillespie Graham was the architect for the Earl of Moray and had designed the Moray Feu in the New Town, and was employed by Lord Alva to continue the New Town westward. Alva Street (named for Lord Alva), which serves as a continuation of William Street and the Georgian grid, was constructed in 1830 and is a rare and fine example of Gillespie Graham's Georgian work.
Stafford Street itself was a joint development between the Erskine and Walker Estates. This has led to some confusion over who was responsible for the design, Robert Brown (Walker's architect) or Gillespie Graham (Erskine's architect). Experts believe it was Brown, as the architecture is simpler, while Gillespie Graham was known for his grand, and often more expensive, works.
Gillespie Graham was also tasked with designing Queensferry Street, part of the Erskine Estate, which acts as the junction between the New Town and the new West End development. The north of Queensferry Street is where the West End meets the Moray Feu. Here Queensferry Street overlooks Randolph Crescent Garden, one of the New Town Gardens, and formerly the location of the estate of the Earl of Moray. Randolph Crescent Garden was not part of the Moray Feu Estate gardens, and the land was not feued, as the Earl of Moray had hoped to extend the Moray Feu into the West End here and build a new city mansion for himself. As such, in 1825 several houses around this area of the Moray Estate had been purchased by the Heriot Trust on the advice of Gillespie Graham. The intention was to knock some of the houses down in order to extend the garden and roads to create a grand entrance from the Moray Estate into the West End development. By 1829, however, it was agreed that the prospect of the feuars agreeing to demolition or deviation from the original Moray Feu plan was so remote that it was not worth pursuing the plan, and the houses were sold at a considerable loss. By 1867 Lord Moray had sold the Randolph Crescent garden to the Feuers at Randolph Crescent, however it remains managed separately from the other Moray Estate gardens.
Randolph Place provides access from Melville Street into Charlotte Square and from there on to George Street in the New Town via two unassuming passages either side of the West Register House, constructed between 1811 and 1814. Robert Adam's original plan for the building included a grand rear entrance onto Randolph Place. However, when the funds could not be found for Adam's design, architect Robert Reid was called in to modify the plan. The modified plan placed attenuated pavilions flanking a Diocletian window above a Venetian window at the rear of the building overlooking Randolph Place, and although architect David Bryce later drew up plans to add towers to the pavilions, this work was never carried out. Randolph Place therefore became a comparatively unimpressive entrance from the West End's Melville Street, into Charlotte Square.
At the north of Queensferry Road is Lynedoch Place, built on land owned by Major James Weir and broadly completed by 1823 by architect James Milne. The Georgian terraces here are stepped into the slope, and command views over the Deane. This is also the location of the Drumsheugh Baths Club. From here the road also splinters onto the Dean Bridge constructed much later by Thomas Telford, and capped on the south side by what is now Deanbrae House (formerly an inn), and to the north by the Holy Trinity Church built in the late 1830s.
This Georgian era central part of the West End is sometimes also known as "Western New Town" or the "West End Village".
The southern area of the new West End was developed separately under several different landowners. Rutland Square had been developed from the 1830s under the auspices of its owner Provost John Learmonth who also owned much of the nearby Dean Village.
The Victorian Extension
The area west of Manor Place remained undeveloped until the 1860s. One of the few exceptions was in 1850, when Sheriff of the Lothians and Peebles George Napier bought some of the land on the west of the estate for construction of a new "Coates Hall", designed by David Bryce as a small Baronial house. Other than this, William Walker left the land north and south of his Easter Coates House home as garden ground and it remained such until the 1870s.
The estate was inherited by William's son, Sir Patrick Walker, who also inherited his father's office of White Rod of the Scottish Parliament (an ancient office similar to Black Rod in England). Sir Patrick expanded the Easter Coates House, often incorporating historic carved stones he had collected from demolished historic buildings in the Old Town. As well as a number of inscriptions there is a round-arched doorway and an elaborate double window with a pediment above, which is said to have come from the French Ambassador's Chapel in the Cowgate.
After his death the Easter Coates House estate would be inherited by Sir Patrick's two spinster daughters: Mary and Barbara Walker. Devout Episcopalians, they donated the garden of Easter Coates House, and fully underwrote the entire cost of building an Episcopalian Cathedral as a centrepiece for the whole West End at the end of Melville Street. There had not been an Anglican/Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh since the Anglican Scottish Episcopal Church was disestablished as the Church of State in 1690, when the Bishop of Edinburgh and congregation were removed from St Giles' Cathedral, which was handed over to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Work began on the cathedral in 1873 under the supervision of The Walker Trust and opened in 1879. It was named St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral. The Walker's funds did not cover the cost of all three spires. The two front spires were not added until 1917.History of St Marys Episcopal Cathedral The Walker Trustees also received the office of White Rod, to be granted to the serving Bishop of Edinburgh, who holds the office ex-officio to this day. In 2011 the Walker Trustees found the regalia of the White Rod in a safety deposit box in the Royal Bank of Scotland Headquarters and donated it for exhibition to the National Museum of Scotland.
The St Mary's Music School was opened in 1880 in the West End as the Song School of St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in 1880 to educate choristers for the cathedral. Napier's New Coates Hall meanwhile was purchased and turned into Edinburgh Theological College - the music school would move to this building in 1994.
Buildings constructed after the latter half of the 19th century are generally regarded as 'the Victorian Extension' of the West End. This includes Drumsheugh Gardens. Designed by John Lessels, they were built around a private garden in the late 1870s, the square was named for the gardens of Drumsehugh House, the estate of the Earls of Moray which once stood on Randolph Crescent in the Moray Feu and stretched into this area of the West End.
Additional Victorian crescents and terraces were built around this northern section of the West End as the Walker family sold off the land to the west of Easter Coates House in the 1860s, usually with a private garden as their central focal point in much the same way as the New Town Gardens. These included the 1860s Rothesay Terrace by Peddie and Kinnear, and the 1870s Eglinton, Glencairn, Grosvenor and Lansdowne Crescents by John Chesser.
Palmerston Place forms a junction between the older Georgian West End and the newer Victorian Extension. It extends into Douglas Gardens, developed in the 1890s and bounding the Waters of Leith.