Leith Walk

Leith Walk is one of the longest streets in Edinburgh, Scotland. It slopes upwards from "the Foot of the Walk", where Great Junction Street, Duke Street and Constitution Street meet, to the junction with London Road, and then it links to the east end of Princes Street via Leith Street. Technically, however, none of the properties in its upper half is addressed as "Leith Walk", as the name is simply colloquial. The sections are correctly titled Elm Row, Haddington Place, Crighton Place, Albert Place, Brunswick Place, Antigua Street, Union Place, Greenside Place, Croall Place, Albert Place, Middlefield etc.

There was a rough pathway in the vicinity of modern-day Leith Walk in the time of James II in the mid 15th century. However, Leith Walk, as we know it, owes its existence to a defensive rampart which was constructed between Calton Hill and Leith in 1650. The attack on Edinburgh by Cromwell's army in that year was halted at this line by the Scots under David Leslie (whose army was subsequently defeated at the Battle of Dunbar). The rampart developed later into a footpath described by Daniel Defoe, writing in 1725 and recalling his time in Edinburgh in 1706, as "a very handsome Gravel-walk, 20 Feet broad, continued to the Town of Leith, which is kept in good repair at the public Charge, and no Horse suffered to come upon it." The fact that it was forbidden to wheeled traffic explains why the street became known as "the Walk", the name by which it is still known locally. At the time of its creation it provided an alternative (and shorter) route to Edinburgh compared with the older Easter Road and its counterpart Wester Road (present-day Bonnington Road and Broughton Road) although it did not supersede these routes as the main road to Leith until after the building of the North Bridge, completed in 1772. To deflect possible opposition to the building of the bridge if it was admitted to be for access to the New Town, the development of which was still controversial, the foundation stone of the bridge, laid by Lord Provost George Drummond, bore the inscription that it was part of "a new road to Leith".

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