Qualla: Edinburgh Town Walls

Edinburgh Town Walls: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adam Harangozó, CC0. On 9 September 1513 the army of King James IV of Scotland was crushed at the Battle of Flodden in Northumberland. James himself died on the field, alongside most of the Scottish nobility. The expected English invasion of Edinburgh never came - the English had problems of their own - but the citizens didn't know that. By the following spring they had resolved to build a new wall around their town. They knew it would not stop a determined enemy. None of Edinburgh's walls ever did. But it would tax the smugglers, and it would feel safer than nothing.

Read more: Edinburgh Town Walls on Qualla

Image: Adam Harangozó | CC0

Edinburgh Town Walls: The King's Wall

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.0 de. Some form of defensive boundary had ringed the burgh since its foundation around 1125 - timber palisades, ditches, perhaps a low stone bank. The first walls properly recorded are in the mid-15th century. In 1427 a title deed refers to the King's Wall as a property boundary. In 14...

Read more: Edinburgh Town Walls on Qualla

Image: CC BY-SA 2.0 de

Edinburgh Town Walls: The Flodden Wall

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Flodden Wall, begun in 1514 in the wake of the disaster, was the most ambitious of Edinburgh's defences. It was 1.2 metres thick and up to 7.3 metres high. It began at the south side of the castle, ran south across the west end of the Grassmarket through the West Port, climbe...

Read more: Edinburgh Town Walls on Qualla

Image: Kim Traynor | CC BY-SA 3.0

Edinburgh Town Walls: How the Wall Failed

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sourav Niyogi, (WT-en) P.K.Niyogi at English Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. The walls proved disappointing as defensive structures. In May 1544, during what the diplomats politely called the War of the Rough Wooing, the Earl of Hertford led an English force into Scotland. After Leith fell, Hertford's gunners under Sir Christopher Morris blew open the Net...

Read more: Edinburgh Town Walls on Qualla

Image: Sourav Niyogi, (WT-en) P.K.Niyogi at English Wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 4.0

Edinburgh Town Walls: The Telfer Wall

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Jonathan Oldenbuck, CC BY 3.0. In 1618 the town council bought ten acres west of Greyfriars and enclosed it between 1628 and 1636 with a smaller extension known as the Telfer Wall - named after the master mason John Taillefer. Most of the new land was sold to George Heriot's Trust for the building of George He...

Read more: Edinburgh Town Walls on Qualla

Image: User:Jonathan Oldenbuck | CC BY 3.0

Edinburgh Town Walls: Surviving Fragments

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rick2007 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Almost nothing of the King's Wall remains, though sections may be incorporated in later buildings. A six-metre stretch of walling in Tweeddale Court off the Royal Mile, identified in 1983 by labourers restoring an old publishing house, is thought to be part of it. Four substantia...

Read more: Edinburgh Town Walls on Qualla

Image: Rick2007 at English Wikipedia | Public domain