The World's End & the Netherbow Port
Why is it significant?
Glance down at the line of brass markers set into the road where the High Street meets St Mary's Street and Jeffrey Street. They trace the outline of the Netherbow Port, the great eastern gate of Edinburgh, with its tower and spire, which stood here until 1764.
Key Facts
| Place | The World's End & the Netherbow Port |
|---|---|
| Address | 4 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TB, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.95040, -3.18410 |
| Part of Walk | Crowns, Kirks and Sanctuary: Edinburgh's Canongate and the Palace of Holyroodhouse |
| Generated | Generated |
Glance down at the line of brass markers set into the road where the High Street meets St Mary's Street and Jeffrey Street. They trace the outline of the Netherbow Port, the great eastern gate of Edinburgh, with its tower and spire, which stood here until 1764. On the corner, the pub called the World's End keeps alive what the gate once meant.
For centuries the Canongate outside this gate was a separate burgh, with its own council, tolbooth and church, first belonging to Holyrood Abbey and later to the Crown and its grantees. Poorer people inside the walls, the story goes, rarely passed through, because coming back in meant paying a toll. For them the world simply ended here. The two burghs were only formally merged in 1856.
The gate was a stage for royal power. The heads of executed rebels were displayed on spikes above it, as a warning to anyone entering the city. Royal processions passed beneath it on their way between the castle at the top of the hill and the palace at the bottom, and every king and queen you have met today knew this arch.
At dawn on 17 September 1745, the gate decided the fate of the city. A coach was let out through the Netherbow, and as the gates swung open, Highlanders of Cameron of Lochiel's regiment, waiting nearby, rushed in. Edinburgh fell to Bonnie Prince Charlie without a shot fired, and that same day he rode into Holyroodhouse, where you stood an hour ago.
The gate was pulled down in 1764 to ease the traffic, but its bell, cast in 1621, is preserved at the Scottish Storytelling Centre a few doors up, beside John Knox House. You have walked from a lost queen's church to a palace, an abbey and a sanctuary, and back to the gate where the city ended. Here, at the World's End, the walk ends too.