Newington, Edinburgh

Newington is a largely residential area around Newington Road in Southern Edinburgh, Scotland.
Toponymy.
Newington is likely a variant of "Newton", meaning "new farm" in Scots. The name may have been invented by Alexander or Mariota Slowman or by their daughter, Margaret. Between them, the Slowmans acquired five of the six lots feued at Newington between 1602 and 1628. Alexander Ellis purchased these lots in 1649 and afterwards styled himself "Alexander Ellis of Newington".
Alternatively, the name derives from "New town meadow" in reference to Edinburgh's role in the 16th-century feuing scheme. The "ing" here represents a meadow.
History.
Early years.
Until the 16th century, the area now occupied by Newington lay within the ancient forest of Drumselch. The only interruptions to this were the nearby Grange of St Giles, developed from the 12th century, and the two southern highways via Liberton and Dalkeith respectively. What is now East and West Preston Street connected these two roads. This was known as "Mounthooly Loan" either in reference to a now-lost chapel at its eastern end in St Leonard's or, via Old Norse, to a "ridged house of the dead": an ancient burial site somewhere in its vicinity. The area was otherwise unnamed save for Lowsie Law, which was likely located near modern South Oxford Street. A minor skirmish of the Marian civil war was fought here in 1571.
In 1586, the town council feued six lots on an uncultivated area of the Burgh Muir bounded by what are today East and West Preston street in the north, Dalkeith Road in the east, East and West Mayfield in the south, and Causewayside in the west. At the same time, the Dalkeith and Liberton roads were widened and the latter metalled or "causeyed", giving it the name "Causewayside". The area remained open countryside until the end of the 18th century. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Mounthooly Loan was known as "Gibbet Loan" for the gallows which stood where East Preston Street Primary School is now. Under these gallows, James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose was buried until his reinternment at St Giles' in 1661.
The modern bounds of Newington contained some smaller development prior to the end of the 18th century. The farmlands of Mayfield, earlier known as Newlands, centred on Mayfield House on Mayfield Loan. This land had first been feued out of the Burgh Muir in 1530. Prior to 1800, there were also cottages at Echo Bank on Dalkeith Road and at the Powburn near Mayfield Road. There was also development along Causewayside, including a house whose two sections were known as Broadstairs House and Wormwoodhall. This stood on a site between Salisbury Place and Duncan Street until its demolition in 1880. James Grant attributes the house to a doctor of James IV or V, in whose family, Grant claims, the house remained until the end of the 18th century, after which it became slums. Summerhall was feued in 1705 and a brewery is recorded there as early as 1739.
18th and early 19th centuries.
From the mid-18th century, developments such as George Square and Nicolson Street had brought wealthy Edinburgh citizens out of the Old Town and into the Southside. Further development south, however, was stalled by the opening of the North Bridge in 1772, which aided the northward development of the city into the New Town. From 1788, southward development resumed with the building of the South Bridge, which connected Nicolson Street to the Old Town. In 1794, an act of Parliament prepared for a great road south through Newington, continuing in the line of Nicolson Street. Minto Street had been planned as part of this by 1795; in 1812, the street was connected to the Liberton and Gilmerton roads. By the turn of the 19th century, many inhabitants of the New Town had developed houses in Newington either as country residences or as more secluded successors to their residences in the dense northern suburb.
In 1805, the entire Newington estate was bought by the surgeon Benjamin Bell, who was assisted in his business dealings by his fellow surgeon Alexander Wood. The same year, Bell built Newington House amid eight acres of land; the house was accessed from Blacket Avenue, which was named for Bell's familial estates in Middlebie, Dumfriesshire. After Bell's death in 1806, Sir George Stewart of Grandtully bought the house and estate in 1808. Stewart constructed gates and lodges at either end of Blacket Avenue and Mayfield Terrace. The gates were closed at dusk every evening. The Kirkwood map of 1817 shows that, by this date most present-day streets in this area had been laid out and named. By the end of the 1830s, the northern part Blacket Place had been developed with detached and semi-detached properties while villas had been constructed in Upper Gray Street near terraces in Middleby Street and Duncan Street. 
The development of Newington and the Southside in this period occasioned the construction of the Hope Park Chapel as a chapel of ease of the West Kirk in 1823. In 1859, the chapel became a parish "quoad sacra" with the name Newington Parish Church. Around the time of the chapel's establishment, the burial ground the Buccleuch Chapel had become overcrowded and the West Kirk parish established a new burial ground at East Preston Street in 1820.
On 12 February 1829, a week after the execution of William Hare, a mob from Edinburgh surrounded the house of Robert Knox on Newington Road. Burke and his accomplice William Hare had supplied corpses to Knox. The mob burned an effigy of the anatomist, who escaped in the guise of a Highlander.
Victorian era.
Development in Newington slowed between 1830 and 1850 but soon after resumed at pace. In this period, properties in the southern part of Blacket Place and the villas of Mayfield Terrace were developed. By 1865, a report by Henry Littlejohn found Newington to be the most densely populated of Edinburgh's southern suburbs. In the expanding suburb, burials were accommodated by the establishment of Newington Cemetery, which opened for internments in 1846. After Warriston Cemetery, Newington, which was laid out by David Cousin from 1848, was the second of Edinburgh's privately managed suburban cemeteries.
Causewayside in particular had, from 1850, become overcrowded and unruly. Barriers were erected in Duncan Street and Salisbury Place to prevent the district's inhabitants from accessing the wealthier residences of Minto Street. Newington Parish Church supported a missionary in this area from 1866 and permanent mission buildings were established on Causewayside in 1886. In these, the Newington Social Union was established in 1892. Improved transport links to the city aided Newington's rapid development in this period. Buses reached the area in the 1850s and tramcars in 1871. Newington railway station on the Edinburgh Suburban and Southside Junction Railway opened in 1884. 
The disruption of 1843 saw the establishment of a Free Church congregation on Newington Road. A United Presbyterian congregation from Potterrow moved to a new church on the corner of Hope Park Terrace and Causewayside in 1867 while the Congregationalists established a church nearby at Hope Park Terrace in 1876. The Free Church went on to establish a congregation at Mayfield in 1875 while a Free congregation from Chambers Street moved to new buildings on Suffolk Road in 1898 under the name Craigmillar Park Free. The Church of Scotland established a mission under the name of Mayfield on Craigmillar Park in 1879. St Peter's, an Epsicopal church, was built on Lutton Place between 1857 and 1865 while St Columba's Roman Catholic Church was established on Upper Gray Street in 1889. Nearby, on Duncan Street, a Baptist church had opened in 1841. In 1847, the church was purchased by the United Presbyterians but returned to the Baptists in 1863 when the congregation moved to the newly-opened Grange Road United Presbyterian Church on the corner of Causewayside and Grange Road in Sciennes.
After Sir George Stewart's death in 1822, Newington House had passed through a number of owners until its occupation in 1852 by Liberal politician, Duncan McLaren. At the western edge of Newington, McLaren acquired the lands of Mayfield and Rosebank along with the village of Powburn. From 1862, the area around Waverley Park was feued to a plan by David Cousin. In 1864, Cousin radically revised this scheme to create a plan of curving streets centring on a communally-owned green space at Waverley Park. This may have been inspired by a similar scheme at London's Ladbroke Grove. Cousin also proposed that, like the Blacket development to its north, entry to this scheme would be guarded by gates and lodges. Lodges remain at the Dalkeith Road entrance to Queen's Crescent and on Peel Terrace. 
After McLaren acquired the Mayfield estate in 1863, he again commissioned Cousin to produce a feu plan; however, only two terraces on the east side of Mayfield Gardens were laid out to Cousin's plan. Nevertheless, the area had been developed almost entirely by the time of McLaren's death in 1886. McLaren's personality and politics are reflected in the names of the streets he developed: Cobden Road, Peel Terrace, and Bright's Crescent are named for fellow reformist politicians; Queen's Terrace for his loyalty to Queen Victoria; Waverely Park for his love of literature; and Mentone and Ventnor terraces for his favourite holiday resorts.
Encouraged by the success of McLaren's Mayfield scheme, Sir Robert Gordon-Gilmour feued the area to its south as East and West Craigmillar Park, beginning in 1876. Development was, however, slower and the remaining unfeued land was turned into a nine-hole golf course in 1895. After one of its fairways was developed for housing in 1904, the club moved to Blackford and the remaining area became sport fields. In the same year, Craigmillar Park Bowling Club opened on vacant space in West Craigmillar Park. The creation of these sporting facilities supplemented the Waverely Lawn Tennis and Squash Club, which had been founded in 1885.
The 19th century saw the establishment in Newington of a number of health and educational institutions. Completed in 1877 on the site of the old settlement at the Powburn, the West Craigmillar Asylum for Blind Females superseded the blind asylum on Nicolson Street. In 1875, Longmore Hospital on Salisbury Place opened as the Edinburgh Hospital for Incurables. Founded by a bequest of John Alexander Longmore, the hospital occupied the former site of several houses and a boys' school known as Wilson's Academy. Other schools of this period in Newington included Munro's Academy and Robertson's Academy, which occupied a Gothic building on the site of what is now South Oxford Street. St Margaret's School was founded in Craigmillar Park in 1890 as Queen Margaret's College for Young Ladies. Also in 1890, Madame Muriset's Craigmillar Park College was established on Crawfurd Road as a girls' boarding school. It closed at Muriset's retirement in 1932, by which time it was also accepting boys.
20th and 21st centuries.
From 1907, Newington House was occupied by the cartographer John George Bartholomew. Bartholomew moved to the house from Falcon Hall in Morningside, which was demolished shortly after the move. Bartholomew relocated his family's cartographic firm to Duncan Street, reincorporating the portico of Falcon Hall in the façade of the new works. In 1915, Bartholomew sold Newington House to the Scottish National Institution for the War Blinded.
In 1913, undeveloped land at East Craigmillar Park was purchased by the Edinburgh Association for the Provision of Hostels for Women Students. Residences were developed and first opened in 1915. During the Second World War, they served as a prisoner-of-war camp for German naval officers. They resumed use as student residences in 1945 and remained in use as such until developed as private housing in 2004.
When the Free and United Presbyterian churches united in 1900, Newington's Free congregations of Newington, Craigmillar Park, and Mayfield had joined the new United Free Church along with the United Presbyterian congregation of Hope Park. In 1929, these United Free congregations joined the Church of Scotland at the union of the two denominations. The following decades saw further congregational unions. The Newington Social Union also ceased operations in 1931. At Salisbury Road, Edinburgh's only purpose-built synagogue opened in 1932. The synagogue was consecreated by Chief Rabbi, Joseph Hertz in front of a crowd of 1,400, which included Edinburgh's lord provost, councillors, and members of parliament. 
In 1940, the former Hope Park United Presbyterian Church united with the former Grange Road United Presbyterian Church to form Newington South and Hope Park Church. The Hope Park buildings were demolished in 1949. In 1966, the former Mayfield established church, by then known as Mayfield South, united with the former Craigmillar Park Free Church on Suffolk Street. The Suffolk Street buildings were sold to St Margaret's School and the united congregation adopted the name Craigmillar Park. Newington Parish Church, which had united with St Leonard's Parish Church in 1932, was dissolved in 1976. The former Newington Free Church, by then known as St Paul's Newington, united with Kirk o' Field in the Southside in 1984. The St Paul's Newington buildings were acquired by Edinburgh City Fellowship, a non-denominational church, the following year. In 1979, the Congregationalist church on Hope Park Terrace left its buildings to unite with Augustine-Bristo Congregational Church on George IV Bridge in the Old Town. 
The late 20th and early 21st centuries saw other changes in Newington's institutions and amenities. Newington Station closed to passengers on 10 September 1962. The Scottish War Blinded vacated Newington House, which was demolished in 1966 and the land sold to the University of Edinburgh. The Longmore Hospital closed in 1991 and was redeveloped as Longmore House, headquarters of Historic Scotland then, since 2015, of Historic Environment Scotland. Opposite this, the National Library of Scotland's Causewayside building was erected between 1985 and 1987 and extended between 1991 and 1994. It occupies the former site of the Middlemass biscuit factory, which the library had used as an annex since 1974.
In education, the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, which had stood on the former site of the Summerhall brewery since 1914, vacated its buildings in 2011. These were then developed as a creative centre. St Margaret's School closed in 2010 after going into administration. Its East Suffolk Road buildings have been converted into a care home while the school's buildings at the former Craigmillar Park Free Church are now occupied by Iqra Academy: an Islamic school and mosque; the school's playing fields were developed for housing from 2015. The Royal Blind School vacated the former West Craigmillar Asylum in 2014. In 2019, the city council approved the redevelopment of its buildings as flats.
Geography.
The area lies on a gentle south-facing slope and is intersected from north to south by the A701 (Newington Road/Minto Street/Mayfield Gardens/Craigmillar Park). The ancient north-south route from Edinburgh to Liberton (Causewayside/Ratcliffe Terrace/Mayfield Road) forms Newington's western boundary with Sciennes, the Grange, and Blackford while the parallel ancient route to Dalkeith (St Leonard's/Dalkeith Road) forms the eastern boundary with St Leonard's and Prestonfield, Edinburgh. 
The A701 and Dalkeith Roads represent major routes into Edinburgh city centre, which is between a mile and two miles north of Newington. The Southside borders Newington north of Hope Park Terrace/Bernard Terrace. Cameron Toll and Nether Liberton border Newington south and west of the busy thoroughfares of Lady Road and Liberton Road. The former Edinburgh Suburban and Southside Junction Railway runs east to west through the southern part of Newington. Though closed to passengers in 1962, it remains in use for freight.
The "Buildings of Scotland" guide to Edinburgh summarises Newington's development as "attracting villas and terraces and then subjecting them to the pressures of commerce and traffic". Newington is a predominantly residential suburb. The South Clerk Street and Newington Road form the main shopping street with specialised shops on Causewayside. There is also a small row of shops on Salisbury Place and on Minto Street near the corner with West Mayfield. There are many guest houses on Minto Street. Institutional buildings include the Summerhall arts centre and Historic Environment Scotland's Longmore House. 
The high ground of northern Newington affords views of Arthur's Seat to the east and the countryside of Midlothian to the south. Despite mature tree growth throughout as well as a number of roadside "nature strips" and communal private gardens, the only public park is a small area around the Braid Burn at the southern tip of Newington. The green space of East Preston Street Burial Ground interrupts development of northern Newington while Newington Cemetery forms a prominent landscape feature at the south-eastern edge of the district.
Townscape.
The northern portion of Newington, between Bernard Terrace/Hope Park Terrace and Salisbury Place/Salisbury Road, is characterised by large, uninterrupted blocks. Buildings on South Clerk Street and Causewayside align to the heel of pavement while elsewhere blocks are mostly set back behind small front gardens. Buildings north of Salisbury Place/Salisbury Road range between two and a half and five storeys with an average height of four storeys.
The rigorous imposition of Georgian and Victorian feuing plans means that, south of Salisbury Place/Salisbury Road, the density of buildings has remained low. In this southern part of Newington, the area between the major north-south thoroughfares of Dalkeith Road and Minto Street is crossed by quieter residential streets. In the area between Salisbury Road, Minto Street, Dalkeith Road and West Mayfield, James Gillespie Graham's feu scheme of 1825 has created regular plots for a mix of detached villas and larger terraces, which rise to one or two storeys. Many of the front and back gardens in this area display mature tree growth. Interruptions to this pattern include the 1930s additions of the synagogue and the five-storey nurses' housing block on Salisbury Road.
On the western side of Minto Street, opposite the Blacket development, the area around South Gray Street and Duncan Street is defined by a mix of residential and non-residential buildings: these include the telephone exchange and Duncan Street Baptist Church. This area also contains former industrial buildings which have been converted to residential use: the coach works and the Edinburgh Georgraphical Institute are examples. South of the Blacket development, large gardens with mature planting as well as a lack of through routes add to the secluded, green character of the Waverley Park development. A similar combination of low-rise housing set back behind front gardens and mature tree growth characterises the southern portion of Newington.
Local landmarks in the northern half of Newington include the prominent spire of St Peter's Episcopal Church on Lutton Place and, on the corner of Causewayside and Salisbury Place, the National Library of Scotland's Causewayside building. In the southern part of Newington, the substantial spire of Mayfield Salisbury Parish Church forms a local landmark on the corner of West Mayfield and Mayfield Terrace and Mayfield Road; as do the former Craigmillar Park Free Church at the eastern end of Suffolk Road and Craigmillar Park Church on Craigmillar Park.
Education.
Pollock Halls of Residence lies just outside Newington. But the northern section of Newington provides numerous flats for students, largely due to the area's proximity to both of the University of Edinburgh's main campuses: George Square and King's Buildings.
Architecture.
Local buildings of interest include: