#old tollbooth

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Royal Mile.

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Video from Explore Edinburgh  on FB 

He’s just an old town fox heading out to work on the night shift 🦊

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On February 6th 1561 Queen Mary sent a letter to Edinburgh Magistrates charging them to take down the ruinous Tolbooth.

Pretorium burgi de Edinburgi, as it is named in the early Acts first opened in 1400 by Royal Charter, it could be found on the High Street next to St Giles Cathedral. It was originally used as the Burgh Council. Over the years it had many different uses such as the town hall and customs office. It was also used as the Scottish Parliament but in 1561 it was mostly used as a prison. From the outside it looks just like a large house. St Giles Cathedral was also used to house prisoners. Political prisoners were held within the cells of Edinburgh Castle to stop protestors swarming the Tolbooth. In those days prisoners were not confined for long periods of time. They would only be locked up until the courts decided their fate. Prisoners would then be banished, flogged, fined or in many cases hung.

Security at the Tolbooth was very poor. There was no boundary wall which made it easy for prisoners to escape. The main entrance was situated right on the High Street which meant that prisoners could walk through the front door and get lost in the crowds.

The bell of the Tolbooth would ring out to signal the opening of the market and also summoned councillors to the meetings of the Town Council which took place in its tower. Long before Parliament House, the Old Tolbooth also accommodated the Court of Session, a practice which came to abrupt end in 1560 when the judges threatened to relocate to St. Andrews unless better premises were provided.

In response to the Queens letter the town council partitioned off the west end of St Giles' which was then used for meetings of Parliament and the Court of Session.  At the same time, a building was constructed at the south-west corner of St Giles' Cathedral for sittings of the Burgh Council, confusingly both were called The New Tolbooth.

In 1571, a chronicle reports the tower of the Old Tolbooth was taken down ("the tour of the auld Tolbuyth was tane doun"). 

A Historian named Hugo Arnot Visited the prison the eighteenth century. He said that the prison was in a shocking state of repair some parts being worse than others. The smell was unbearable. Three young boys aged twelve-fourteen were held in a cell that was usually held used for prisoners facing execution the smell was so bad that he was unable to enter the cell.  Plans were drawn up for a new prison, the Bridewell which was built between 1791 and 1796 on Calton Hill 

The Old Tolbooth continued be used as a prison and place of execution until it was finally demolished in 1817.

The Heart of  Midlothian now sits where the entrance of the prison was once situated. People used to spit in the centre as a mark of disdain for the people executed at the prison. Now people spit in it as a mark of respect to the people who lost their lifes there.

No doubt a lot of the fabric of the old building was used elsewhere in Edinburgh, the most famous bit of old style recycling is most definitely from the author of Heart of Midlothian, Walter Scot, who managed to take the door of the tolbooth, and had it built into a side wall of Sir Walter Scott's House, as seen in the third pic.