The winning plan in the town council’s competition of 1766 for building a new town on the ridge north of Edinburgh’s crowded Old Town: three parallel streets between two squares, the outer two built on one side only, each long view ended by a public building.
Edinburgh in the 1760s was still packed into the medieval ridge between the Castle and Holyrood, in tenements of ten storeys and more. Lord Provost George Drummond’s scheme to expand north across the valley of the Nor’ Loch led to the North Bridge (begun 1763) and to an open competition, won by the twenty-six-year-old James Craig. His plan was adopted in July 1767 and engraved in 1768, dedicated to George III and printed with lines from James Thomson’s poem Liberty.
The plan is a simple, legible grid on the crest of the ridge: George Street along the spine, wider than the rest, with St Andrew Square at its east end and St George’s (later Charlotte) Square at the west; Princes Street and Queen Street along the two flanks, looking out over gardens; and narrow service lanes, Rose Street and Thistle Street, between. Its names (George, Charlotte, Princes, Queen, Rose and Thistle) celebrate the Union and the Hanoverian crown. Plots were sold (feued) to private builders subject to conditions laid down by the council, which were tightened in the following decades.
The book, part by part
I The grid and the squares
Three parallel streets, the central one the principal, two squares ending it, lanes for coach-houses and lesser houses between.
Rules: Three parallel streets between two squares · Close each long view with a public building
II The terraces facing out
Princes Street and Queen Street built on one side only, their houses looking across open ground, to the Castle and the Old Town on one side, to the Firth of Forth on the other.
Rules: Terraces that face the view