Calton Hill

There was possibly a prehistoric hillfort on Calton Hill and an area used for quarrying (the Quarry Holes at the eastern end). By his charter of 1456, James II granted the community of Edinburgh the valley and the low ground between Calton Hill and Greenside for performing tournaments, sports and other warlike deeds. Monasteries were abandoned following the Scottish Reformation of 1560, and in 1591 the Calton Hill monastery was converted into a hospital for lepers, founded by John Robertson, a merchant. So severe were the regulations that escape, or even the opening of the gate of the hospital between sunset and sunrise, would incur the penalty of death carried out on the gallows erected at…

The Old Calton Burial Ground was the first substantial development on Calton Hill and lies on the south-western side of the hill. and died there in 1841. Burns, Scotland's national poet, sent Clarinda many verses over several years in unsuccessful (it is believed) attempts to seduce this beautiful married lady. Calton Hill was the location of the notorious Calton Jail, while on Regent Terrace is located the United States Consulate. Her young son, Henri, the Comte de Chambord, is said to have wept bitterly when his family left for Austria in 1832 as he had become very attached to Scotland. The western end of Regent Terrace was closed in 2001 to traffic because of security concerns about the…