Newington is a neighbourhood of southern Edinburgh, Scotland. Developed from the early 19th century, it is an affluent, predominantly residential area.
Located between south of Edinburgh city centre, Newington is bounded to the east by St Leonard's and Prestonfield; to the south by Cameron Toll and Nether Liberton; to the west by Blackford, the Grange, and Sciennes; and to the north by the Southside, Edinburgh. Historically part of the parishes of St Cuthbert's and Liberton in the county of Midlothian, Newington was incorporated into the city of Edinburgh between 1832 and 1896.
Originally part of the ancient forest of Drumselch, the lands of Newington were feued by the town council of Edinburgh from 1586. Aside from small developments, the area was predominantly rural until Benjamin Bell purchased the lands in 1805 and began to develop them as a suburb. Around this time, the construction of a new route from Edinburgh's New Town to Liberton via Newington was accelerating the southward development of the city. From the 1850s, bus services connected Newington to the city centre while trams arrived in 1871. Newington station opened to passengers in 1884. By this time, the area was almost entirely developed. In the latter half of the 19th century, institutions including the Longmore Hospital, the Royal Blind Asylum, and St Margaret's School set up in Newington. Newington station closed to passengers in 1962.
Northern Newington consists of dense early Victorian tenements and Georgian terraces. South of Salisbury Road, these give way to sparser, late Georgian and early Victorian developments, some of which were founded as gated communities. Southern Newington includes Victorian villas and terraces as well as some former industrial buildings.
With a population of around 11,000, Newington today remains an affluent, primarily residential suburb. The area is also one of the most diverse in Edinburgh. Newington houses Edinburgh's only synagogue as well as the headquarters of Historic Environment Scotland and the Causewayside site of the National Library of Scotland.
Toponymy
Newington is likely a variant of "Newton", meaning "new farm" in Scots. The name may have been invented by Alexander or Mariota Slowman or by their daughter, Margaret. Between them, the Slowmans acquired five of the six lots feued at Newington between 1602 and 1628. Alexander Ellis purchased these lots in 1649 and afterwards styled himself "Alexander Ellis of Newington".Harris 1996, p. 422.
Alternatively, the name derives from "New town meadow" in reference to Edinburgh's role in the 16th-century feuing scheme. The "ing" here represents a meadow.Smith 1978, i p. 24.Gray in Gray 1961, p. 65.
Late 18th and early 19th-century property records often refer to the area of Newington as "Belleville". The origin of this title is obscure but may be related to an alternative name for the mansion of Clockmiln (or Clockmill) near Holyroodhouse. The name has long since fallen out of use, being maintained only in the name of a mansion on Blacket Avenue.Gray 1942, p. 154.
History
Early years
Until the 16th century, the area now occupied by Newington lay within the ancient forest of Drumselch. The only interruptions to the forest were the nearby Grange of St Giles, developed from the 12th century, and the two southern highways via Liberton and Dalkeith respectively. What is now East and West Preston Street connected these two roads. This was known as "Mounthooly Loan" either in reference to a now-lost chapel at its eastern end in St Leonard's or, via Old Norse, to a "ridged house of the dead": an ancient burial site somewhere in its vicinity.Gray in Gray 1961, p. 9.Harris 1996, p. 411. The area was otherwise unnamed save for Lowsie Law, which was likely located near modern South Oxford Street. A minor skirmish of the Marian civil war was fought here in 1571.Harris 1996, p. 379.
In 1586, the town council feued six lots on an uncultivated area of the Burgh Muir bounded by what are today East and West Preston street in the north, Dalkeith Road in the east, East and West Mayfield in the south, and Causewayside in the west. At the same time, the Dalkeith and Liberton roads were widened and the latter metalled or "causeyed", giving it the name "Causewayside". The area remained open countryside until the end of the 18th century.Harris 1996, pp. 152, 207, 422. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Mounthooly Loan was known as "Gibbet Loan" for the gallows which stood where Preston Street Primary School is now. Under these gallows, James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose was buried until his reinterment at St Giles' in 1661.Gray in Gray 1961, pp. 9-10.
The modern bounds of Newington contained some smaller development prior to the end of the 18th century. The farmlands of Mayfield, earlier known as Newlands, centred on Mayfield House on Mayfield Loan.Smith 1978, i p. 27. This land had first been feued out of the Burgh Muir in 1530.Harris 1996, pp. 390-391. Prior to 1800, there were also cottages at Echo Bank on Dalkeith Road and at the Powburn near Mayfield Road.Grant 1880, iii p. 50. There was also development along Causewayside, including a house whose two sections were known as Broadstairs House and Wormwoodhall. This stood on a site between Salisbury Place and Duncan Street until its demolition in 1880. James Grant attributes the house to a doctor of James IV or V, in whose family, Grant claims, the house remained until the end of the 18th century, after which it became slums.Grant 1880, iii p. 51.Smith 1978, i p. 29. Summerhall was feued in 1705 and a brewery is recorded there as early as 1739.Harris 1996, p. 546.
18th and early 19th centuries
From the mid-18th century, developments such as George Square and Nicolson Street had brought wealthy Edinburgh citizens out of the Old Town and into the Southside. Further development south, however, was stalled by the opening of the North Bridge in 1772, which aided the northward development of the city into the New Town.Smith 1978, i pp. 24-25. From 1788, southward development resumed with the building of the South Bridge, which connected Nicolson Street to the Old Town. In 1794, an act of Parliament prepared for a great road south through Newington, continuing in the line of Nicolson Street. Minto Street had been planned as part of this by 1795; in 1812, the street was connected to the Liberton and Gilmerton roads.Thain 2020, p. 5. By the turn of the 19th century, many inhabitants of the New Town had developed houses in Newington either as country residences or as more secluded successors to their residences in the dense northern suburb.Harris 1996, pp. 422-423.Smith 1978, i p. 25.
In 1805, the entire Newington estate was bought by the surgeon Benjamin Bell, who was assisted in his business dealings by his fellow surgeon Alexander Wood. The same year, Bell built Newington House amid eight acres of land; the house was accessed from Blacket Avenue, which was named for Bell's familial estates in Middlebie, Dumfriesshire.Smith 1978, i p. 26. After Bell's death in 1806, Sir George Stewart of Grandtully bought the house and estate in 1808. Stewart constructed gates and lodges at either end of Blacket Avenue and Mayfield Terrace. The gates were closed at dusk every evening. The Kirkwood map of 1817 shows that, by this date, most present-day streets in this area had been laid out and named. By the end of the 1830s, the northern part of Blacket Place had been developed with detached and semi-detached properties while villas had been constructed in Upper Gray Street near terraces in Middleby Street and Duncan Street.Holmes 2001, p. 5.
The development of Newington and the Southside in this period occasioned the construction in 1823 of the Hope Park Chapel as a chapel of ease of the West Kirk. In 1859, the chapel became a parish quoad sacra with the name Newington Parish Church. The congregation established a school on Dalkeith Road, opposite the end of Holyrood Park Road.Dunlop 1988, p. 480. Around the time of the chapel's establishment, the burial ground the Buccleuch Chapel had become overcrowded and the West Kirk parish established a new burial ground at East Preston Street in 1820.Gray in Gray 1961, p. 10.Pitcairn Anderson 1931, p. 680.
On 12 February 1829, a week after the execution of William Hare, a mob from Edinburgh surrounded the house of Robert Knox on Newington Road. Burke and his accomplice William Hare had supplied corpses to Knox. The mob burned an effigy of the anatomist, who escaped in the guise of a Highlander.Smith 1978, i p. 30.Gray in Gray 1961, pp. 71-72.
Victorian era
Development in Newington slowed between 1830 and 1850 but soon after resumed at pace. In this period, properties in the southern part of Blacket Place and the villas of Mayfield Terrace were developed.Holmes 2001, p. 8. By 1865, a report by Henry Littlejohn found Newington to be the most densely populated of Edinburgh's southern suburbs.Smith 1978, i p. 28. In the expanding suburb, burials were accommodated by the establishment of Newington Cemetery, which opened for interments in 1846. After Warriston Cemetery, Newington, which was laid out by David Cousin from 1848, was the second of Edinburgh's privately managed suburban cemeteries.Grant 1880, iii p. 57.Holmes 2002, p. 9.
Causewayside, in particular, had, from 1850, become overcrowded and unruly. Barriers were erected in Duncan Street and Salisbury Place to prevent the district's inhabitants from accessing the wealthier residences of Minto Street.Gray in Gray 1961, p. 79. Newington Parish Church supported a missionary in this area from 1866 and permanent mission buildings were established on Causewayside in 1886. In these, the Newington Social Union was established in 1892.Gray in Gray 1961, p. 82.
Improved transport links to the city aided Newington's rapid development in this period. Buses reached the area in the 1850s and tramcars in 1871. Newington Railway Station on the Edinburgh Suburban and Southside Junction Railway opened in 1884.
The disruption of 1843 saw the establishment of a Free Church congregation on Newington Road. A United Presbyterian congregation from Potterrow moved to a new church on the corner of Hope Park Terrace and Causewayside in 1867 while the Congregationalists established a church nearby at Hope Park Terrace in 1876.Cant 1990, pp. 121-122. The Free Church went on to establish a congregation at Mayfield in 1875 while a Free congregation from Chambers Street moved to new buildings on Suffolk Road in 1898 under the name Craigmillar Park Free.Dunlop 1988, pp. 267-272.Cant 1990, p. 126. The Church of Scotland established a mission under the name of Mayfield on Craigmillar Park in 1879.Dunlop 1988, p. 271. St Peter's, an Episcopal church, was built on Lutton Place between 1857 and 1865 while St Columba's Roman Catholic Church was established on Upper Gray Street in 1889.Gifford, McWilliam, Walker 1984, pp. 241-242.Dilworth 1989, p. 8. Nearby, on Duncan Street, a Baptist church had opened in 1841. In 1847, the church was purchased by the United Presbyterians, who moved out in 1863 to the newly opened Grange Road United Presbyterian Church on the corner of Causewayside and Grange Road in Sciennes. After this, the Duncan Street church was again occupied by a Baptist congregation.Dunlop 1988, p. 254.