Victoria Street & the West Bow: Tales Saved from the Wreckers

Why is it significant?

Walk slowly down the curve of Victoria Street. The shopfronts are painted every colour of a paintbox, and above them runs a terrace with railings where people lean over and look down at the passers-by.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Walk slowly down the curve of Victoria Street. The shopfronts are painted every colour of a paintbox, and above them runs a terrace with railings where people lean over and look down at the passers-by. It is one of the most photographed streets in Scotland, and visitors love to call it the real Diagon Alley... a claim that is easy to make and impossible to prove, so enjoy it as a game.

The street is younger than it looks. It was cut in the 1830s as part of the same great improvement scheme that built George IV Bridge, and it was named after the young Queen Victoria. Before that, the way up from the Grassmarket was the West Bow, a steep, crooked lane zigzagging up to the Lawnmarket. Kings and queens making their ceremonial entry into the city rode up the Bow, and condemned prisoners were led down it to the gallows.

The Bow had a darker resident. Major Thomas Weir was an old soldier and a famously pious Presbyterian, admired for the eloquence of his prayers. In 1670, as an old man, he suddenly confessed to a string of terrible crimes and to dealings with the devil. He was executed, and his sister with him, and for more than a century his empty house in the Bow was said to be haunted, his walking stick running errands by itself.

This is where literature comes in. Walter Scott grew up on these tales, and in his novel Redgauntlet he named a mischievous pet monkey Major Weir. And a young bookseller called Robert Chambers went from close to close, collecting the old stories before the demolitions swept them away. His Traditions of Edinburgh, first published in the 1820s, is still the book that local guides quietly borrow from. Without Chambers, much of what you hear in the closes today would be lost.

Those steps you came down, the Upper Bow, are a last surviving scrap of the old lane, so you have already walked in the Major's footsteps. Now carry on down to the bottom of the street, turn left along the eastern end of the Grassmarket, and climb the curving slope of Candlemaker Row. It is a short uphill pull, and at the top a very small dog is waiting for you.