St Andrew Square & the Melville Monument

Why is it significant?

Stand in the middle of St Andrew Square and lean back until you find the small stone figure on top of that enormous fluted column. He wears a peer's robe and looks out over the rooftops as if he still owned them.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand in the middle of St Andrew Square and lean back until you find the small stone figure on top of that enormous fluted column. He wears a peer's robe and looks out over the rooftops as if he still owned them. That is Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville, and in his lifetime people called him, only half joking, the uncrowned king of Scotland.

The square around you was the opening move of the New Town. In the 1760s almost everyone in Edinburgh, rich and poor, still lived stacked on top of each other in the tall tenements of the Old Town ridge across the valley. Then the city adopted a plan for a brand-new grid on the empty fields to the north, and this square was its eastern anchor, named after Scotland's saint.

Dundas was a lawyer who became Home Secretary, Secretary of State for War and First Lord of the Admiralty, and for decades he controlled who got jobs, seats and favours in Scotland. In 1792, when William Wilberforce asked Parliament to abolish the slave trade, Dundas proposed an amendment adding one word: gradual. His defenders say it was the only version that could pass. His critics say it bought the trade fifteen more years... Britain finally banned it in 1807. In 1806 Dundas himself was impeached over the handling of naval funds, the last impeachment in British history, and acquitted.

The column went up between 1821 and 1823, modelled on Trajan's Column in Rome, and the statue was hoisted to the top in 1828. In recent years, after a long campaign led by the scientist Sir Geoff Palmer, the city added a new plaque at its foot, dedicating the monument to the enslaved Africans whose suffering that delay prolonged. Some historians and Dundas's descendants dispute its wording. The argument is now part of the monument... and that may be the most honest thing about it.

Now glance at the grand mansion set back behind its forecourt on the east side of the square. Remember it, because the walk ends there, and it hides the cheekiest land grab of the whole New Town. For now, cross to the west side and step into George Street. The first church on your right is our next stop.