Mar 21, 2024
This Podcast is the 2nd in a 4 Part series on Edinburgh city. Ghosts, witches and skeletons all revealed while building Edinburgh’s New Town would have been the Newspaper Headlines in 1780. And it is strange that the people of Edinburgh still use the name, ‘the New Town’ when it was built so long ago!
This is a story which follows on from my previous Podcast on the Old Town which had become overcrowded, filthy and disease ridden and something had to give. Effectively, the rich moved out and many would have left Scotland altogether had it not been for the foresight of the City Fathers who acknowledged a need for a new start beyond the city walls of the Old Town.
You will hear about the draining of the Norloch, the cesspit where most of Edinburgh’s Old Town detritus was deposited and the macabre findings by men who worked on the project. You will tour the Streets of the New Town with me and hear of the prestigious buildings and the prestigious individuals who inhabited those fabulous Georgian dwellings, such as Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.
You will also hear from Sheonah Martin, the Manager at the Georgian House, who kindly agreed to be interviewed and to give us an insight into 1780s Edinburgh living and how the young ladies of the day met their husbands to be. And thankyou to the National Trust for Scotland for looking after so much of Scotland's heritage.