The Meadows (park)
The Meadows is a large public park in Edinburgh, Scotland, to the south of the city centre. It consists largely of open grassland crossed by tree-lined paths, but also has a children's playground, a croquet club,tennis courts and recreational sport pitches. It is bordered by the University of Edinburgh's George Square campus and the Quartermile development on the site of the old Edinburgh Royal Infirmary to the north and Marchmont to the south. To the south-west it becomes Bruntsfield Links where there is a free, public pitch and putt golf course.
The Meadows originally contained a loch, known as the "burgh loch" or, later, the "South Loch". It covered much of the area bounded in the east by Hope Park Terrace and in the west by the point where Melville Drive becomes Brougham Street, and in the south by Melville Drive and in the north by the site later occupied by the Old Royal Infirmary, a total of 63 acres (250,000 m2). The loch drained from east to west, where the burn known as the Loch-rin was sluiced to prevent the water from draining out. It is from this burn that the street names Lochrin Buildings and Lochrin Place in Tollcross derive. Until Edinburgh's first piped water supply from Comiston arrived in 1621, the loch provided much of the town's drinking water.
It was partially drained in the mid-17th century and for a time named Straiton's Loch or Straiton's Park after the burgess who tried to improve the area. From 1722 century Sir Thomas Hope (c. 1681–1771), an agricultural improver and politician, ordered more drainage work, making the marshy land into a park with a path round the edge, hedges, avenues of lime trees, drainage canals and a summer house. The central tree-lined path known as Middle Meadow Walk followed, and for several decades maps labelled this area as "The Meadows or Hope Park". It is the traditional practice ground of the Royal Company of Archers, whose meeting-place is nearby. In 1827 an Act of Parliament protected the Meadows from being built upon.
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