Royal Circus: Playfair Tames the Slope

Why is it significant?

Here the New Town bends. Two great curving terraces face each other across a sloping, tree-filled garden, and the road runs between them like the string through a bow. By 1800 Craig's first New Town was practically full, and the city kept pushing north, down the slope toward the Water of Leith.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Here the New Town bends. Two great curving terraces face each other across a sloping, tree-filled garden, and the road runs between them like the string through a bow.

By 1800 Craig's first New Town was practically full, and the city kept pushing north, down the slope toward the Water of Leith. This northern extension was planned from 1802, with long straight streets like Heriot Row and Great King Street. But a grid laid on a steep hill always runs into trouble at its edges, and this corner was the hardest.

The solution came from William Henry Playfair, the architect who also gave Edinburgh its National Gallery and much of Calton Hill. He designed Royal Circus around 1820 as two crescents instead of a closed circle, so the street could swing round the contour and down toward the village below. Stand still for a moment and you can feel it: the ground under you tilts, and the two halves of the circus sit at different levels, yet the curves make it look effortless.

Below Circus Place lies Stockbridge, once a separate village of mills, tanneries and washerwomen along the river. One of its most famous residents was the portrait painter Henry Raeburn, who was born there and later developed part of the land himself. He named the prettiest street, Ann Street, after his wife. So in a few hundred metres you pass from aristocratic polygons to a painter's private love letter.

It is worth remembering who carried the coal up these hills and the water up these stairs. Behind every one of these elegant doors there were basements full of maids and cooks, often girls from the Highlands, working from before dawn. The New Town looks serene because so much of its labour was kept out of sight. Now leave the circus by Howe Street and climb uphill, it is steep, until you meet the long, straight terrace of Heriot Row on your left.