Edinburgh Castle, the Royal Mile, the Scott Monument. If you’re an Edinburgh local then you probably know these magnificent places of history like the back of your hand.
However, the Scottish capital has so much more to offer beyond these tourist magnets.
Here are five hidden gems from around the city, all of which are free and accessible throughout the year.
North: Promenade rubbings trailAlong the coastal walk from Granton harbour to Cramond you’ll find a series of nine small plinths, each topped with a postcard-sized brass plaque sporting a raised design inviting you to rub and replicate.
The designs are by children from three local primary schools: Pirniehall, Davidson’s Mains and Cramond.
Artist Kate Ive, who has a studio in the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, created moulds from their sketches.
Near Granton harbour you’ll find drawings of the local sea life and fishing industry, including a wonderful shoal of little fishes like tiny floating fried eggs. Near Silverknowes you’ll find images of the local buildings, including Lauriston Castle. And at Cramond you’ll find pictures of the Roman heritage and the iron mill.
Just pack your paper and crayons and you can take home your very own print collection.
South: Phyllis Bone’s zoological sculpturesAll around the outside of the Ashworth Laboratories in Kings Buildings are small but beautifully carved animal sculptures.
They are the work of Phyllis Bone, a graduate of Edinburgh College of Art who also carved the animal sculptures for the Scottish National War Memorial.
Bone’s creatures represent different zoogeographical regions:
- The reindeer, golden eagle and polar bear are from the Palaearctic.
- A beaver and a bison come from the Nearctic.
- An aardvark, a chimpanzee and a lion signify the Afrotropical region.
- A rhinoceros, a tiger and an elephant from the Oriental, aka the Indomalaya ecozone.
- A kangaroo from Australia, a nine-banded armadillo from South America, a pair of sphenodon lizards from New Zealand.
- And Invertebrates – a dung beetle, a crab and a swirling octopus – have a group of their own.
The great bronze doors of St. Andrew’s House are only visible when the building is shut (weekends and 10pm-6.30am weekdays).
Nine feet wide and 12 feet high, they were designed by the sculptor Walter Gilbert, and modelled by his son Donald.
The panels depict four Scottish saints around the St Andrew’s cross, each representing a different Scottish ethnic group.
St Columba, who banished the Loch Ness monster, represents the Gaels. St Ninian, represents the Anglo Saxon. St Magnus of Orkney, who took refuge in Scotland after refusing to take part in a Viking raid, represents his Viking blood. And the Picts are represented by St Kentigern, aka St Mungo, a missionary who became patron saint of Glasgow.
You’ll find St Andrew at their centre, fishing in the sea of Galilee, with the words, ‘And I will make you fishers of men’ inscribed on either side of the great thistle door handles.
East: The Coadestone ColumnsJust back from the Portobello sea front are three elegantly decorated columns, looking ready to carry out some architectural variation on the Indian Rope Trick.
Each seems to be ornately carved out of stone, but they are in fact made from Coade stone, an artificial mix developed in 1770 by one Mrs Eleanor Coade.
The columns originally stood on the other side of Portobello in the grounds of Argyle House, which in the mid 1980s was being demolished for redevelopment by the council.
The Portobello Amenity Society stood in front of the bulldozers and managed to save the beloved pillars from the rubble heap.
For decades the dissembled blocks rested in council storage while the society fought to raise the funds to have them restored and relocated.
They discovered the columns had exactly the same patterns as the chimneys at Dalmeny House. Whether they were spares, seconds or Felaffas (fellaffa back of a lorry), no one is quite sure.
West: Hully Hill CairnBetween the lines of the M8 and M9, where the planes rise and the twin signs of BP and MacDonalds sway, lies one of the most important prehistoric sites in Southern Scotland.
To find it, head to Newbridge roundabout and take the exit marked Newbridge Industrial estates.
Hully Hill Cairn is not sign-posted, but she’s there on your right, in the field across from the petrol station.
You will find an early Bronze Age burial mound surrounded by three Neolithic standing stones, gracefully ignoring the temporary irritations of fast foods, slow traffic and “Xtreme Karting”.
This entire industrial zone was once a magnificent burial site and the standing stones are the remains of what would have been a large stone circle. There’s a fourth stone stranded on the other side of the roundabout, in the grounds of Exova testing .
And a fifth, the Cat Staine, right by the main runway of Edinburgh airport, only viewable from the banks of the River Almond or from the window seat of a departing flight.
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