Thread by @cocteautriplets

🧵It's been a while, so I thought I would take a dive into the placename books and have a look around Gorgie and Dalry. The pic is the wonderfully 80s neighbourhood branding that some of the streetsigns got for reasons I don't know of.

Gorgie? It's very old name, records go back to the late 12th century when William "The Lion" I of Scotland was on the throne and it was "Gorgine" on charters of Holyrood Abbey

The land was a Royal Manor, with a Provost in charge. The earliest recorded owner was "Serlo", a burgher of Edinburgh. Serlo is a Norman name, from Norse.

As to what Gorgie means, the thinking is it comes from the Brytonnic Gor Gyn, a geographic description for an "upper wedge" of land, probably defined between the Water of Leith and Craiglockhart hills, seen here on Roy's map of the 1750s (NLS).

Indeed it's possible that an old 14th century placename "Craggis de Gorgin" may refer to the Craiglockhart Hills, with Estircrag de Gorgyne, the east hill of Gorgie, being Craighouse Hill.

By the 13th century the name began to evolve, through Gorgyne, Gorgyn and Gorgye until by the early 16th century it got to Gorgie or Gorgy. The Blaeu atlas of 1654 gives Gorgy (although on the wrong side of the river) and Adair's of 1682 gives Gorgie (both NLS)

Roy's map of the 1750s clearly shows the line of Gorgie Road (yellow) and Slateford Road (green), with Gorgiehouse on the east bank of a lade (the "Rose Burn") which diverted the Water of Leith for milling. Damhead just to the north emphasises the point.

Gorgie Mill dates to the late 15th century and Gorgie House to the early 16th. Clearly the estate was important and industrious in nature.

By the mid 19th century, Gorgie House had dissapeared as a placename thanks to the importance of Gorgie Mills, which was the doing of Cox's glue and gelatine works. I'm assuming this is Gorgie House centre in this 1852 advert (from Grace's Guide gracesguide.co.uk/images/8/81/Im…)

The OS 6 inch map of this time clearly shows Gorgie as a rural setting on the fringe of the city. Gorgie Mills is surrounded by "Gorgie" (West Mains of Gorgie) to the west, Gorgie Park to the south and Gorgie Mains to the east. In the centre is Gorgie station on the NBR.

The use of Mains (i.e. Mains farm) is a connection back to when this was a feudal estate. The mains (a Scots word, from Norman "Domain") was the principal farm of the estate. If you have Mains farms, you have an estate.

After Serlo, the lands of Gorgie estate had passed by the late 13th c. to a Fergus Comyn, from whom it was bought by Sir William de Levington (Livingston) of Drury, who became Lord of Gorgyn, Craigmillar and Drumry.

After William, Lord of Gorgyn, the lands appear to have gone back to Holyrood Abbey before being sold off in the 16th century to "portioners" (in Scots feudal land law, "the proprietor of a small feu or portion of land").

This process was reversed by Sir Thomas Mudie (Moodie), a wealthy Edinburgh burgess of the family of Mudies of Angus. Mudie bought up the portions of Gorgie and Saughton from 1637, joining them with lands he bought in Dalry in 1642 and styling himself Sir Thomas Mudie of Dalry.

On the death of Sir Thomas, the lands passed to his daughter Jonet, whose husband then became Sir Alexander Maxwell of Saughtonhall, after one of the principal houses on the estate.

In 1669, Jonet sold the estate to Sir Robert Baird, another wealthy Edinburgh merchant, who became Robert Baird of Saughtonhall. In 1695 he was created 1st Baronet of Saughtonhall in the peerage of Nova Scotia, hence the Nova Scotian flag on the arms.

It was Baird who rebuilt Saughtonhall house, which the Baird Baronets continued to occupy for 100 or so years before it was let out. The lands were parcelled up and sold off over the years, with Saughtonhall becoming a "Private Lunatic Asylum" in 1824.

The Corporation of Edinburgh bought the lands in 1900 and the house in 1907. The Bairds are commemorated by a small number of streets to the north in Balgreen built in the 1920s.

And now onto Dalry. Stuart Harris, an authority on such matters, does not support the obvious derivation of the Gaelic "Dail Righ", or King's meadow. Instead he prefers the Bryttonic "Dol Rug", via Gaelic "Dail Fhraoigh", or heathery meadow.

Dalry goes back to the early 14th century as Dalrye, with Dailry also being given in the 15th c. and the Dalry Mills were important waulking and grinding mills from that time, on that same lade as Gorgie Mills called the Rose Burn. (Adair's map, 1682, NLS)

Dalry Mills saw the first recorded paper making in Scotland in 1591, when merchants Mungo and his son Gideon Russell contracted two German papermakers, Haere and Keysar, to convert a mill to paper making. For their efforts King James VI granted them a 19 year monopoly .

Dalry House, "a classy villa institutionalised in a back stret" dates from the 17th century and has been considerably modified and extended since.

Dalry House was once home of John Chiesly, a man of "violent and ungovernable passions", who infamously shot and murdered the Lord President, Sir George Lockhart, in 1685 (source Geograph, © Mr H)

Chiesly had arrived infront of Lockhart's bench due to divorce proceedings involving his long suffering and estranged wife Margaret Nicholson. When Lockhart found in Margaret's favour, the barely sane Chiesly went into a rage and swore revenge.

Although Lockhart (pictured) was forewarned, he brushed aside the concerns and went about his business. He was followed from Church at St. Giles on Easter Sunday, 1689 (not 1685, a typo!) by Chiesly, who shot him in the back at close range outside his house on the High Street

Chiesly was apprehended at the scene and reputedly said "I am not wont to do things by halves, and now I have taught the president how to do justice." For his pains he was tortured to find out if he had accomplices and was then sentenced to death by the Lord Provost

Chiesly was dragged across Edinburgh to the Mercat Cross to be hung in chains, before which the arm which had fired the pistol was cut off. He was left to die on the scaffold with his pistol hanging from his neck.

What became of "Johnny One Arm" was unknown, but it was alleged his supporters rescued his body and buried it in secret on the Dalry estate and that his ghost haunts Dalry House. In 1965 a one-armed, 300 year old skeleton was reputedly uncovered in the grounds...

In 1696, Dalry House was bought by Sir Alexander Brand, who renamed it Brandsfield, but it reverted to its previous name when sold off in 1714. In 1870, Dalry House was sold by its residents, the Walkers, to the Scottish Episcopal Church as a training college.

This undoubtedly saved the house from being swallowed up by the tenements that had by then surrounded it to provide workers housing for what was now an industrial suburb.

Dalry House became a "Normal School", from the French "école normale", a model school for teaching teachers (in this case, specifically teachers of the Scottish Episcopal Church, who at the time ran many schools in Scotland).

Part of the Normal School itself was run as a primary school by the Episcopal Church, the Normal Practicing School. Although it later passed to the Edinburgh Shool Board, the name stuck as Normal Primary. My Dad attended here in the 1950s and being called "Normal" was a slur

Somewhat sensibly it was later renamed Orwell Place Primary, still leased from the Episcopal Church, and it was something of a tiny oddity until it closed in 2004. My Mum taught there in the 1990s. It and the former old folks home in Dalry House are now luxury flats

Correction - at least some of the school is used as an arts / community / charity centre. The two were interlinked, I can remember being in the attic store room with my Mum and being shown the door that connected the buildings.

Gorgie is of course best known for its maroon-clad residents at Tynecastle Park, a place name that apparently has little to do with rivers or castles, but is more likely Tigh na Caiseal, or house on a hill or rock.

Stuart Harris thinks that the original Tynecastle may have been the tollhouse on the (1776, Taylor & Skinner Road Strip maps, NLS) where the old Calder and Slateford roads diverged (the Dalry Road at this time was nothing but a lane and not the principal way out of the city)

In 1831 on the maps drawn up for the Great Reform Act boundaries, it's certainly marked as "Tynecastle Toll", and distinct from the Slateford Toll.

And also Kirkwood's county map of 1817 (both of these maps from NLS)

Moving east a bit, another curious placename is "Moat", now given to a short section of Slateford Road as "Moat Place", and a couple of side streets. Roy records it as "Mote" in the 1750s and in the 1840s the OS has it as ruinous and called "Mount".

It likely refers to a promontory, Mote and Moat are used in Scots placenames and are derived from the Norman Motte for a defensive mound (see also Motte and Bailey castles). The OS came along and Anglicised it, but it didn't stick.

Later OS maps revert to Moat, but across the road as the Mackenzie Brothers foundry had opened up on the site of the original building. Note that at this time the old burn/drain from Craiglockhart is still in evidence, although cut by the road and railway.

Did I say we were moving east? I meant west of course...

As Dalry moves onto Gorgie as you go west, Gorgie in turn moves on to Saughton, a placename that covers a wide section of land all the way back to 1128. The old form was Salectun or Salchtone, from Old English for Willow Farm, with Salig for Willow from the Latin Salix.

Those "Sauch" or "Saugh" Scottish placenames (e.g. Sauchie, Saughtree) have the same derivation.

Note also that "Old" Saughton House and Saughtonhall House are two different places - the first where Broomhouse Primary School now stands, dated to 1623 but burnt down in 1918, the second where Saughton Gardens now is, demolished by the city in 1954.

Saughton of course lends its name to another local landmark, although strictly speaking I think it's always been officially "HM Prison Edinburgh" and *technically* that is on the lands of Stenhouse and not Saughton (a corruption of Stenhope, the landowners in the distant past).