There was some chat the other week about place names that were so bewildering as to how they should be pronounced that they were the shibboleth of the "real" local. One which kept coming up for Edinburgh was "Sciennes".
First things first, it's Sciennes as in Sheens as in Machine Ma- or Rise of the Ma-
And the name comes directly from St. Catherine of Siena, a convent in her honour being established in the locality in 1517. In Scots, Siena was Seynis or Schiennes. From there it's a short leap to the modern Sciennes, but the pronunciation has remained true to the original
The convent occupied a 2 acre site and was surrounded by an enormous wall, some 13 feet high. The land had been fued off the Burgh Muir (land owned by the city) to the Canon of St. Giles in 1513, who founded a chapel and hermitage to St. John before giving it to the Sisters 
Given the location some 1000m outside of the city walls (hence the big enclosure), it's consistently missed off of all the older town plans, and it's not until Kirkwood's plan of 1817 that it makes it in. We can see an old rendition of "Scienes" and the reference to Siena
Notice the 2 arrows in the last map; and notice that they correspond to 2 obvious kinks in the street layouts. These mark the turn of the boundary wall of the convent.
It also explains why Sciennes (Scienes Street) splits off at a very shallow angle from Causewayside, leaving that odd gushet of Lord Russell Place. It was the alignment of the original footpath to the convent from St. Giles.
After the Borough Loch was drained, and the Meadows began to be lade out as a park, some of the city's rich built large villas off it. A roadway formed at the back of the plots, but couldn't run straight through at the east end as it was blocked by Sciennes Hill House (red X)
Now Sciennes Hill House isn't actually on a hill, the name may come from it being at the top of Causewayside though. The Scottish philosopher and historian of the Enlightenment, professor Adam Ferguson, lived there
The National Gallery has this sketch of his house at Sciennes Hill (nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artist…) and notes a party there attended by a young Walter Scott, Robert Burns, Dugald Stewart, Joseph Black, James Hutton, and John Home!
Can only imagine how inadequate you'd feel, staring into your tea, sitting round a table while that lot had a debate!
Back to the matter in hand. Sciennes was a well-established place name, and lent its name to that lane along the back of the big hooses off the Meadows (Sciennes Road) and the house, as Sciennes House Place and Sciennes Hill Place.
And Sciennes Hill House itself? Well, believe it or not it's actually still there, kind of. The back now faces the street, and it's been repurposed into a tenement. That rubble finish doesn't quite look Victorian, and that stair door is out of alignment...
Oh and those plaques are a bit of a give away too...
And if you can get around the back, this ain't your usual finish for a tenement back green!
Before it was restored in 1989 and given a much more uniform appearance, it can be clearly seen where the original doorways at 1st floor level would have been. (picture dennisrodwell.co.uk/page12.html)
St. Catherine of Siena lent her name to one of the Victorian streets of villas on the Grange:Marchmont border.
For some reason though, when Bertrams Ltd. built a large factory off Sciennes, they went for St. *K*atherine's Works. Bertrams were ironfounders and engineers, specialising in roller machines for papermaking and printing.
Bertram's were a very successful company, with a foundry in Gorgie at Westfield and also one in London (another St. Katherine's Works) to serve the London newspaper industry (pic, Capital Collections - capitalcollections.org.uk/view-item?key=…)
Bertram's works burned down in 1983 at a difficult time for the company as the Scottish print and papermaking industries died, and it was gone by 1985. When new housing was built on the site, appropriately it was named "Siena Gardens" flickr.com/photos/maleny_…
Sciennes of course also lends its name to the school (I am typing to you from an old teacher's desk of that establishment, recovered from a skip). I recall the first time I saw it on an Edinburgh school's football league fixtures sheet as a P4, and yes I too said "Scy-ens"
There's one more "place" in Sciennes that's been lost to time, that's the romantic and enigmatic sounding "Glen Sciennes". Indeed it's a place that never even existed, and on paper only for 5 or so years. It was a trademark name for the spirit from the Sciennes distillery!
By 1860, it was the plain old "Edinburgh Distillery", and by 1925 it was finished off by the mega grain distilleries at Gorgie (the North British and the Caledonian) and incorporated into Bertram's works.
So, for the benefit of @urbaneprofessor, here's the thread on why there's *so* much more to Sciennes than school and Sick Kids hospital! (the link is probably easier to follow than on Twitter, given they've messed up threading) threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224730…
