Thread by @cocteautriplets

This had me stumped (ho!ho!ho!) for a bit as it's not "in the books", but some digging around in other places has thrown up a few answers! 🪄🧵👇

https://twitter.com/Olivernoonday/status/1529784770825269248

The "witches tree" was an ancient plane tree that grew on the south shore of the city's stinking swamp that was called the Nor' Loch, "in the shadow of the Castle Rock".

Alexander Nasmyth's beautifully romantic painting of the loch and castle in 1824 is drowning in artistic licence, but shows us where the Witches Tree was, somewhere on the back there beyond the figures in the foreground.

There's a good chance this is the Witches Tree, shown in an 1820 engraving "General view of the old town from Princes Street" by an unknown artist in the collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.

We can work this out as it is described as having been cut down at some point in the 1880s to make way for the gardens greenhouses (themselves cleared in the 1890s to double the width of the railway). This puts the tree in the then Ramsay Gardens

Ramsay Gardens were the gardens on the slope below the "Goose Pie House" built by poet Allan Ramsay in around 1740.

Plane trees can live a few hundred years, the oldest London Planes are thought to be about 330 years. So in the 1880s when it was cut down, the Witches Tree could possibly date back to the 16th century, and witches were still being tried and executed into the 18th century.

John Slezer's sketch of 1673 does indeed show a few mature trees growing down the boundary wall towards the loch (📷Edinburgh City Libraries)

There's an 1836 photo by Alexander Inglis (📷Edinburgh City Libraries) that happens to be taken in *exactly* the right - the flat ground behind the railway signal pole is where the greenhouses were built. And Lo and Behold! There's a big old tree there. Is that the Witches Tree?!

Of the tree itself, an 1898 article in The Scotsman describes it. "The Witches Tree it came to be named, for to it were bound the poor doomed crones who had to undergo their cruel ordeal by water, which if they survived, ended in their death by fire"

"So that plane must have seen many a helpless, aged woman persecuted to death by a dastardly mob. To the Witches Tree were also nailed proclamations and some say prisoners awaiting execution of sentence were fastened to the sycamore by a nail through the ear"

When the tree was cut down, the huge trunk was left near where it fell for a number of years before it was bought by William S. Brown, a local cabinetmaker "unwilling to let this landmark... pass out of recollection"

Brown used the wood to make a variety of furniture which he gave to friends, with each having a little plaque explaining the heritage. Many of the items were "cutty stools" (short stool) - a traditional 3-legged stool often used for milking, or women to sit in church.

In popular lore, a Cutty Stool thrown by Jenny Geddes in 1637 at the minister trying to preach from the book of Common Prayer started a riot in St. Giles cathedral which would eventually lead to the Bishop's War and the "English" Civil War.

Brown's workmen allegedly pulled lots of ancient nails from the tree and after blunting a number of saws, found a set of Branks within it - also known as a Scold's Bridle. The branks were a common form of kirk punishment meted out to unfortunate women in the 16th and 17th century

It was supposed that the branks were the long lost property of St. Cuthbert's or the West Kirk, in whose demise the tree once stood. (🖼️James Skene, 1827, Edinburgh City Libraries)

The Scotsman further records the donation of one of the stools in 1913 to the Edinburgh Corporation Museum by a Mrs Stirton of Braidburn Terrace and in 1914 a section of the tree itself by W. S. Brown, by then Sir William.

William S. Brown himself was recorded as a cabinet maker at 28 Howe Street and Broughton Market in 1877, when he supplied all the furniture under contract to the Craiglockhart Hydropathic Establishment.

He participated in the 1884 Forestry International Exhibition in Edinburgh, his display including a a dining suite made from ancient Caledonian oak tree (📷Edinburgh City Libraries)

In 1885 Brown won the contract to supply all of the furniture to the extension of the City Fever Hospital at Greenbank and relocated to Hanover Street the same year.

By 1899 the business was at 65 George Street, and remained there until at least 1911.

Unrolled thread of the story of the Witches Tree and the enterprising cabinet maker William Brown, as a single, easy to read webpage. threadreaderapp.com/thread/1531573… 🔚

Possible interest @andyheald @eleanormharris @Dendrochronicle @witchesofscotl1