Qualla: Leith Walk https://qualla.com/leith-walk en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:17 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/leith-walk-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Leith Walk https://qualla.com/leith-walk Leith Walk: Introduction https://qualla.com/leith-walk/ Photo credit Suicasmo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cromwell's army was coming. In 1650 the Scots under Sir David Leslie threw up an earthen rampart between Calton Hill and Leith to defend Edinburgh's northern approach. The rampart didn't save Scotland; Leslie's army was crushed at Dunbar months later. But the rampart stayed, and the broad causeway that ran alongside it became a footway, then a coach route, then the high street of a working city. Locals still call it the Walk, because that is what it always was. Walk it from end to end today and you cross 900 years of pedestrian history, much of it buried just below the tarmac.

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Image: Suicasmo | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/leith-walk-wp/gcvw-leith-walk-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Leith Walk: From Rampart to Causeway https://qualla.com/leith-walk/ Photo credit Anne Burgess, CC BY-SA 2.0. In a charter of 1456, James II granted land at Greenside in the valley between Calton Hill and the road to Leith. Archaeologists working ahead of the Trams to Newhaven project recently uncovered a cobble-lined road thought to be between 900 and 600 years old. Defoe walked this wa...

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Image: Anne Burgess | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/leith-walk-wp/gcvw-leith-walk-from-rampart-to-causeway.mp3 0:06 2 full Leith Walk: Shrubhill and the Gallow Lee https://qualla.com/leith-walk/ Photo credit Enric, CC BY-SA 4.0. Just south of Pilrig was a place called the Gallow Lee, literally the field with the gallows. Five Covenanters were executed here in 1681: Robert Garnock, Patrick Forman, David Farrie, James Stuart, Alexander Russel. In 1670, Major Thomas Weir, who confessed to sex crimes and sto...

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Image: Enric | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/leith-walk-wp/gcvw-leith-walk-shrubhill-and-the-gallow-lee.mp3 0:06 3 full Leith Walk: The Pilrig Muddle https://qualla.com/leith-walk/ Photo credit subberculture, CC BY-SA 2.0. Trams arrived early on Leith Walk and stayed late. Leith ran Scotland's first electric tram service in 1905, six years before Edinburgh's own corporation got around to it. There was just one problem: Leith's tram terminated at Pilrig Church, where the burghs met. Edinburgh's tram...

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Image: subberculture | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/leith-walk-wp/gcvw-leith-walk-the-pilrig-muddle.mp3 0:06 4 full Leith Walk: The Walk Today https://qualla.com/leith-walk/ Photo credit Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before the 1870s tenement boom, Leith Walk was largely rural, with mansion houses and plant nurseries lining its length. The east side had fewer mansions, which made the land cheaper to buy up for tenements, which is why the two sides of the street still feel different. McDonald ...

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Image: Kim Traynor | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/leith-walk-wp/gcvw-leith-walk-the-walk-today.mp3 0:06 5 full