As Rome, the city of Edinburgh can also be considered as a living memory of its past with the dust of the old city accumulating onto the modern one. Patrick Geddes, a Scottish town planner and biologist uses similar techniques to Piranesi’s study of Campo Marzio to survey the city of Edinburgh. As Piranesi proposes to record history as ruins and decay through strategic moments in the past, Geddes also envisages the city of Edinburgh not only through the contemporary methodologies of previous surveyors but rather by connecting the modern city with its origins, geographically and historically, tracing the progress of the city through strategic periods of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Industrial ages and recording the city through its former and later developments in each era 12 (see Fig. 11 and 12).
11 | Patrick Geddes and F.C. Mears, The beginnings of
12 | Zaid Prasla, The present city of Edinburgh
the first human settlements as a hill fort.
Therefore, in order to excavate artifacts of ancient Edinburgh, it is a prerequisite to understand the city’s history in some degree. Geddes’s survey offers that reading of the city from its origins to the contemporary era. The first human settlements in the city can be traced back to the beginnings of the town as merely a hill fort at Castle Rock with a small fishing dock at Leith across the agricultural plains of the Lothian. The city was a small agricultural village with farming and animal husbandry as the main occupation of the people. During this period, as the city grew, more land belonging to the vegetal world was replaced by new agricultural farms and houses confined to the High Street from the Castle Rock to the Canongate. The city was surrounded by the King’s Wall as a defence against enemy attacks from the south and the ‘Nor Loch’ to the north 13 (see Fig. 13). As we enter the Middle Ages, we see Scotland in a state of constant conflict with England and in the events that followed in the wake of the disastrous Battle of Flodden in 1513, the city saw the rapid construction of the Flodden Wall around the Cowgate and Grassmarket which was outside the boundaries of the King’s Wall. Due to scenario of an imminent war, the citizens started taking refuge within the safety of the walls causing the city to build over the existing city, deteriorating the once spacious open-air houses in the Old Town to a slumlike condition with buildings within close proximity of one another. 14 The Industrial Age saw the Old Town to decay further into a state of ‘ruin’, neglected by the council and left to die as people moved to the New Town across the Loch which was built for the increasing population of high-class citizens belonging to city nobles, merchants, and lawyers. The New Town yet lacked the basic backbone of workshops and factories which were still located in the Old Town which became a place of ancillary services filled with filth and diseases and occupied by the poorest communities of the city. 15 The city therefore became two cities where one city belonged to the rich and the other belonged to the poor (see Fig. 14).
12 Patrick Geddes and F.C. Mears, The Civic Survey of Edinburgh. (Edinburgh: Civics Department, Outlook Tower, 1911). p. 537. 13 Ibid. p. 542- 548. 14 Ibid. p. 548- 550. 15 Ibid. p. 557.
13 | Patrick Geddes and F.C. Mears, The early town of
14 | Patrick Geddes and F.C. Mears, The two cities of
Edinburgh surrounded by the King’s Wall in 1450 A.D.
Edinburgh
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