The Assembly Rooms: Where Walter Scott Confessed
Why is it significant?
Find the portico of heavy Doric columns on the south side of George Street, with lanterns flanking the doors. Behind it are the Assembly Rooms, and for more than two centuries this has been the place where Edinburgh dressed up and went out. They opened in 1787, paid for by public subscription.
Key Facts
| Place | The Assembly Rooms: Where Walter Scott Confessed |
|---|---|
| Address | 54 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 2LR, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.95280, -3.19860 |
| Part of Walk | Edinburgh's New Town: Georgian Squares, Crescents and the Plan That Built a City |
| Generated | Generated |
Find the portico of heavy Doric columns on the south side of George Street, with lanterns flanking the doors. Behind it are the Assembly Rooms, and for more than two centuries this has been the place where Edinburgh dressed up and went out.
They opened in 1787, paid for by public subscription. The new residents of the New Town did not want to trudge back across the valley to the Old Town for their dances, so they built their own. An assembly was a very Georgian institution: dancing, card tables, tea, and a great deal of discreet matchmaking, all under strict rules about who could dance with whom and when the evening ended. The columned porch you see was only added in 1818, and a large music hall was built on behind in 1843.
The most famous night here was the 23rd of February 1827, at a dinner in aid of the Edinburgh Theatrical Fund. Since 1814 a series of hugely successful novels, Waverley, Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, had appeared without an author's name. All of Britain called the writer the Great Unknown, and all of Edinburgh knew perfectly well who it was. After his publishers collapsed in 1826 and left him with crushing debts, the secret no longer protected anything. When a judge, Lord Meadowbank, raised a toast that alluded to the mystery, Walter Scott stood up and admitted, in front of the whole room, that the novels were his.
The guests applauded as if it were news. Scott then spent the rest of his life writing to pay off those debts, and he very nearly managed it.
The building is still in use, and every August it becomes one of the busiest venues of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with comedians where the quadrilles used to be. Keep walking west along George Street, past the statue of William Pitt at the Frederick Street crossing, until you reach the next crossroads, where a bronze preacher stands in the middle of the road.