Qualla: Morningside, Edinburgh

Morningside, Edinburgh: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M J Richardson, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is a Lothian Buses route, the No. 5, that runs out to Morningside with the picture of a kitten on the side. The cat is Maisie MacKenzie, the title character of a series of children's books by Aileen Paterson. Her livery went on the buses in 2011. Morningside is the sort of place where they put cats on the buses. The accent that Maggie Smith used as Miss Jean Brodie was Morningside. The Dominion Cinema on Newbattle Terrace has been run by the same family since 1938. The Bore Stone, embedded in the wall of a former church, supposedly marks where the Scottish army mustered before marching to Flodden in 1513, though historians dispute the claim. This is a neighbourhood that pays attention to its own myths.

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Image: M J Richardson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Morningside, Edinburgh: Plague Money and the Burgh Muir

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Melissa Highton, CC BY-SA 4.0. The land that became Morningside was once part of the Burgh Muir, common ground gifted to Edinburgh by King David I sometime in the first half of the 12th century. In the late 16th century the city had to find a way to pay for the cost of dealing with the plague that swept throug...

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Image: Melissa Highton | CC BY-SA 4.0

Morningside, Edinburgh: Trains, Trams, Tenements

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0. Transport made Morningside possible as a daily commute. In the 1870s a horse-drawn tram service connected the village to the east end of Princes Street, one of the first such services in Edinburgh. The trams became cable cars, then electric. In 1885 the Edinburgh Suburban and Sou...

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Image: Kim Traynor | CC BY-SA 3.0

Morningside, Edinburgh: Buildings That Lasted, and Some That Did Not

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Dominion Cinema at 18 Newbattle Terrace is a classic Streamline Moderne building from 1938, owned and operated by the same family since it opened. It is one of the few surviving independent cinemas in Scotland. The Church Hill Theatre at 33 Morningside Road was originally the...

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Image: Kim Traynor | CC BY-SA 3.0

Morningside, Edinburgh: Miss Brodie and the Morningside Accent

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0. Muriel Spark attended James Gillespie's School for Girls in nearby Marchmont from 1923 to 1935, and used the school as the model for the Marcia Blaine School in her 1961 novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The novel is set partly in Morningside. When Maggie Smith won an Oscar fo...

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Image: Kim Traynor | CC BY-SA 3.0