Edinburgh Cowgate fire

Cowgate

Scotland
Scots: Cougait
The Cowgate, viewed from George IV Bridge
Other name(s)	Free town
Length	0.4 mi (0.6 km)645 ft (197 m)
Location	Edinburgh, Scotland
Postal code	EH1
West end	Candlemaker Row
East end	The Pleasance

The Cowgate (Scots: The Cougait) is a street in Edinburgh, Scotland, located about 550 yards (500 m) southeast of Edinburgh Castle, within the city's World Heritage Site. The street is part of the lower level of Edinburgh's Old Town, which lies below the elevated streets of South Bridge and George IV Bridge. Consequently, the Cowgate can be quite gloomy and dark in sections. It meets the Grassmarket at its west end and Holyrood Road to the east.

The street's name is recorded from 1428, in various spellings, as Cowgate and in 1498 as Via Vaccarum. It is derived from the medieval practice of herding cattle down the street on market days; a number of other streets in the old town of Edinburgh (such as Grassmarket and Lawnmarket) also reflect their market roots. Gate is a Scots language word for "way" or "road", a cognate of similar words in other Germanic languages (compare with ).

Describing the street in the 1581 edition of their atlas of major cities Civitates orbis terrarum, Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg said the Cow Gate was where "...the noble families and city councillors have their residences, together with other princely houses and palaces most handsome to behold."

Between the mid 18th and mid 20th centuries the Cowgate was a poor, often overcrowded slum area. In the 19th century it was home to much of the city's Irish immigrant community and nicknamed "Little Ireland".

In the evening of 7 December 2002, a fire started above the Belle Angele nightclub off the Cowgate. It swept up through the eight storey structure to other buildings on Cowgate and above it on South Bridge. The complicated nature of the buildings, with narrow alleys and entrances from the same building onto streets at different heights, complicated efforts to fight the fire, and was later called a "rabbit warren" by Lothian and Borders Fire Brigade. It took more than a day for the fire, fought at its height by 19 fire crews, to be extinguished. 150 people were forced to flee the flames, but no lives were lost.