Gladstone's Land

I have been following three blogs of three different builds by a very talented lady, one of which is The Tenement.  It was in a sort of way rather odd to walk through a life-size version of her creation.

Gladstone's Land is genuinely an excitingly unique building in all kinds of ways. 

Gladstone's Land, a six storey building that stands on the north side of Edinburgh's Lawnmarket, not far down the Royal Mile from Edinburgh Castle, is the most important of them.

Gladstone's Land has its origins in a building probably built in the latter part of the 1500s in a position 23ft further back from road than today's building. This probably had wooden galleries at different levels along its front, allowing residents to take the air without the need to wade through the open sewer that was the street itself.

On 20 December 1617 the property was purchased by Thomas Gledstanes and his wife. Like other owners of other properties along the "Kingis Hie Street" at the time, he built an extra room onto the front of each storey of the house, moving its frontage 23ft out into what as a result became a very much narrower street. This must have been part of an officially sanctioned policy to increase the amount of accommodation available within the overcrowded city. (Undiscovered Scotland)

Unfortunately you can't take pictures inside so I don't really have anything to share other than the front of the building and the back.  Please click on the two links I've put here and take a tour of a wonderful building simply loaded with information for anyone working on a project from about 1500 to 1700 - it is all there.  Better still book a holiday in Edinburgh.

front including pig

The courtyard behind the building is full of interesting 'other' buildings too but here is the view of the back of Gladstone's Land.

look carefully for the hoist on the roof 

The hoist was needed to get anything heavy or oversized to the various floors.  there was no way they would be coming up the very narrow spiral staircase.

Interesting, if confusing, fact:  the 'Land' is the word for building and 'Tenement' is the word for the land the 'Land' stood on.  We seem to have got them reversed since those days.  So Gladstone's Land mean Gledstane's (even spelling of the name got changed) building.