Quite excited to find this image on @TalesOfOneCity that I'd inexplicitly missed before. It's the "Gate of the Old Citadel of Leith", an 1818 watercolour by lawyer and budding artist James Skene (Image © City of Edinburgh Council) 
@TalesOfOneCity As I may have said about a billion times before, there are *no* contemporary illustrations of the citadel when it was still standing, and the earliest map showing it in plan was made 50 years after it was abandoned and ruined. Even this detail from 1818, 150+ years later, is rare
@TalesOfOneCity There's going to be 2 strands to this thread. Firstly, what does it show us. And secondly, where was it taken? So lets go through each in turn.
@TalesOfOneCity Despite being a small watercolour, there's a lot of interesting detail in there. The obvious thing is it shows the citadel port (gate). It shows us the walls were faced in stone and filled with mud/rubble. It gives us an idea of overall height and there are figures for scale 👍
@TalesOfOneCity We can see tall tenements with pan-tiled roofs (common on the east coast of Scotland before slate became ubiquitous). We know that the citadel became a fashionable quarter of Leith, these are probably houses built after it had been turned over to residential use
@TalesOfOneCity We can also see that the blocks here don't meet at right angles, it was a 5-sided fortress, so they meet at about 72 degrees.
@TalesOfOneCity We see street lighting. From previous threads we know that these were "train (whale) oil" lamps
@TalesOfOneCity A woman hangs out her washing on the shore to dry
@TalesOfOneCity Two men on the shore appear to be working stones. He in the red seems to have a regular block propped up. I wager they are reclaiming masonry from the collapsed walls from the tideline.
@TalesOfOneCity These two square posts in the water are intriguing. The citadel was surrounded by an engineered ditch (which would have naturally flooded as a moat) and it's more than likely it had wooden bridges across it. It's nice to think that those posts may be part of that
@TalesOfOneCity And we have a two-storey block with curving external stairs. We know that there were at least 2 two-storey blocks built with the citadel for quarters and stables. From later plans we also see suggestions of external stairways
@TalesOfOneCity And of course, it's auld Leith and wouldn't be auld Leith without a forest of masts and rigging
@TalesOfOneCity So to conclude the first question, we can see a lot, and it seems to be quite reliable in terms of general layout and what we know of the buildings that might have been there.
@TalesOfOneCity But where was the artist when he made his drawings? Well that's easy, because we know where the citadel port was, because it's still there...
@TalesOfOneCity Except there's 3 problems. Firstly, you can't look through the citadel port and have the ships to the left of the image. Secondly, there was no range of buildings running parallel to the shore (i.e. right of picture) in the Citadel. Thirdly, the arch doesn't match the extant one
@TalesOfOneCity So how can we be looking at the arch of the port but not be infront of the port? Well, that's because until the early 19th century, the western port still existed as a ruin. It's clearly marked on contemporary maps, e.g. T
@TalesOfOneCity Or here,
@TalesOfOneCity This map (Bell, 1813) is the best to explain. The artist is at X. He is looking towards the black arch. The blue is the 2-storey range and the green are the larger tenements. The trees belong to the gardens in green. The map confuses as it shows a lot of planned, unbuilt detail
@TalesOfOneCity The Docks and warehouses shown on Bell's map were not yet completed, so we don't see them on the left, but we do see the forest of masts in the harbour beyond.
@TalesOfOneCity But, Andy, you say. How come the two men appear to be in the water? Shouldn't that be the shoreline? Well we need to remember that the citadel had a *very* wide military ditch around it, which flooded at high tide. The 1709 Naish map shows it, the men are working in the "moat"
@TalesOfOneCity I've only ever seen one other illustration of the western port of the Citadel, which refers to it as "Oliver's Mount" (i.e. Cromwell), but confusingly shows it bifuricating. I *think* it was being used as a cattle store and had been walled internally
@TalesOfOneCity The artist I think has been working 2nd hand from a description and made it look like there were 2 tunnels leading off of the port. Personally I think that's a mistake, it makes little sense. The main entrance was to the east, this was a sally port hence rougher masonry
@TalesOfOneCity Another semi-contemporary image shows the "Cromwell House", in which Cromwell never stayed. It *may* have been built as a governor's mansion, or it may have been added after the fort was abandoned to residential use. It certainly is a clear contemporary of Pilrig House
@TalesOfOneCity So yes, I'm excited by this image, I really don't know how I missed it in my previous trawls. It gives a few more tantalising clues as to the overall layout and finish of the citadel. It also shows there were 3 & 4 storey tenements there, probably in early 18th century
@TalesOfOneCity It also reinforces my previous conclusions about the layout as being more or less correct. Now if I could just find some darn evidence about the north wall along the shoreline and its corner bastions...
@TalesOfOneCity This also matches nicely with a detail in an engraving by John Clerk of Eldin (who was a top draughtsman), which it is easy to overlook. If we squint we see the sally port (blue) and a 2-storey tenement (red). The Custom House is in yellow to help our bearings, with masts beyond
@TalesOfOneCity That Clerk of Eldin engraving is in the National Galleries collection, you can zoom in on it at your leisure here; nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artist…
@TalesOfOneCity Thread time!
