The Cowgate

You're on the low road now — the Cowgate, a deep canyon of a street running directly beneath the Old Town you walked along the top of earlier today. Look up. Those great stone arches carrying traffic over your head are George IV Bridge and South Bridge. And remember the bridge of nineteen arches back at the Tron Kirk, the one you couldn't see? This is the arch that stayed in daylight — you're standing underneath it. The name is as plain as it sounds. From the 1330s this was the way cattle were driven down to market, and it still leads west to the place they were sold: the Grassmarket, our next stop. In 1581 a Flemish atlas described the Cowgate as the street where the noble families and city councillors had their residences. Two centuries later it was one of the poorest quarters in Britain, home to so many families who had fled the Irish famine that Victorians called it Little Ireland. Two survivors are worth a glance as you pass. The Magdalen Chapel, built in the 1540s with money left by a merchant for an almshouse for seven poor men, holds the only intact pre-Reformation stained-glass window left in Scotland. And here at the foot of Niddry Street stands St Cecilia's Hall — opened in 1763 as Scotland's first purpose-built concert hall, now a free museum of harpsichords and early keyboard instruments, open Tuesday to Saturday, with seats and a quiet room if your legs are asking for ten minutes. Otherwise keep going west: the Grassmarket, and the coffee, are about eight minutes away.